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FROM    PERICLES   TO   PHILIP 


BY  THE   SAME  AUTHOR 

The  Conflict  of  Religions  in  the  Early  Roman  Empire 

Life  and  Letters  in  the  Fourth  Century 

Virgil 

Poets  and  Puritans 


r 


TO 

RENDEL     HARRIS 

ESSE  SUI  DEDERAT  MONUMENTUM 
ET  PIGNUS  AMORIS 


J 


PREFACE 

THE  period  from  Pericles  to  Philip  is  in  many 
ways  the  most  interesting  of  Greek  history. 
Indeed,  when  we  use  the  word  "Greek" — 
whether  we  think  of  art  or  literature,  of  philosophy  or 
politics,  of  the  Greek  spirit  or  of  the  Greek  attitude  to 
life — nine  times  out  of  ten  we  are  turning,  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  to  the  century  and  a  quarter  between 
the  birth  of  Pericles  and  the  accession  of  Philip.  It  is 
because  in  all  the  regions  of  thought  and  life,  which  I 
have  named,  the  formative  impulses  come  from  this  time, 
or  reach  maturity  in  it,  recognize  themselves  or  are 
recognized  iji  it.  But,  if  we  are  to  understand  history, 
we  have  to  ask,  more  carefully  than  we  sometimes  do, 
what  are  the  things  that  matter.  In  the  perspective  of 
time,  for  instance,  how  many  events  of  the  decade  1850- 
60  are  yet  of  such  consequence  as  the  publication  of 
The  Origin  of  Species,  or  have  meant  so  much  to 
mankind?  Lecky  spoke  of  John  Wesley's  conversion 
as  an  epoch  in  English  history.  Can  we  imagine 
the  comment  of  Horace  Walpole,  or  of  Dr.  Johnson 
himself,  on  such  a  criticism,  if  it  had  been  made  by 
a  contemporary  ?  Yet  it  is  hard  to  say  that  Lecky 
was  not  right.  But  do  the  histories  as  a  rule  give  us 
Such  events  in  a  perspective,  that  will  bring  out  their 
significance  ? 


viii  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

The  significant  events  are  not  deposited  in  History- 
naked  and  solitary,  like  the  boulders  shed  by  the  ice- 
floes on  the  Southern  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence. 
They  come  into  being  in  a  society  with  an  atmosphere 
of  its  own ;  and  that  also  is  of  signal  importance,  if  we 
are  to  understand  the  events.  As  a  rule,  they  are  apt 
also  to  be  associated  somehow  with  the  personality  of 
some  man,  who  in  some  creative  way  has  helped  to 
make  the  atmosphere  of  his  day,  or  who  has  perhaps 
reacted  against  it  and  becomes  himself  the  impulse  for 
the  age  following  or  even  for  many  generations  and 
many  races. 

The  object  proposed  in  this  volume  is,  by  attention 
to  Greek  life,  not  in  the  abstract,  but  as  we  find  it  in 
traveller  and  poet,  in  critic  and  statesman,  as  it  shows 
itself  in  education  and  the  axioms  of  conduct,  in  the 
market  and  the  household,  as  well  as  to  the  political 
ideas  and  the  decisive  events,  national  and  international, 
to  come  nearer  to  an  understanding  of  the  period.  The 
relations  of  Greece  with  Persia,  in  particular,  are  at  this 
time  so  vital,  and,  as  a  rule,  have  received  so  little  atten- 
tion beyond  side-references  in  English  histories  of  Greece, 
that  a  chapter  has  been  given  to  Persia,  in  which,  for 
once,  Greece  itself  plays  the  second  part — second,  because, 
if  Persia  is  the  decisive  factor  in  the  political  history  of 
Greece,  Greece  is  no  less  for  Persia.  I  have  to  thank 
Professor  E.  G.  Browne  for  his  kindness  in  reading  and 
mending  this  chapter.  I  have  also  to  thank  my  cousin, 
Mr.  F.  B.  Glover,  for  expert  criticism  on  my  attempt 
to  deal  with  Athenian  shipping  and  banking. 

Three  chapters  of  the  book  were  given,  in  whole 
or  in  part,  as  Library  Lectures  in  Haverford  College, 


PREFACE  ix 

Pennsylvania,  in  the  spring  of  1912.  The  rest  has  been 
written  since  then,  partly  before  and  partly  after  the 
beginning  of  the  war.  Since  I  sent  the  manuscript  to 
the  publisher,  many  months  have  passed  ;  the  delay  was 
inevitable ;  and  as  I  have  read  the  proofs  I  have  found 
new  links  of  sympathy  with  the  men  of  whom  I  wrote. 
Their  experience  is  strangely  like  what  ours  has  been 
and  will  be — the  strain  of  a  long  war,  the  readjustment  of 
all  life  to  conditions  that  raise  question  and  doubt,  the 
endeavour  to  re-found  society  and  to  find  anew  a  base 
from  which  the  soul  can  make  all  its  own  again.  Much 
that  I  wrote  has  been  given  for  me  a  new  meaning  ;  some 
allusions,  so  quick  in  these  last  months  has  been  the  march 
of  events,  seem  out  of  date  already.  But  a  true  record 
of  human  experience  is  never  irrelevant,  and  the  period 
from  Pericles  to  Philip  had  above  all  others  great  natures 
and  master  intellects  to  interpret  it.  I  hope  that  my 
attempt  to  survey  once  more  what  they  left  may  be 
found  honest  and  sympathetic,  and  that  it  may  lead  some 
to  read  them  again,  and  perhaps  induce  in  others  a 
quieter  reconsideration  of  what  Greek  studies  have 
always  meant  to  us. 

Cambridge,  Aprils   19 17 


CONTENTS 


I.  The  Traveller  in  the  Greek  World 
II.  The  Age  of  Pericles    . 

III.  Thucydides 

IV.  Athens  in  the  War-Time 
V.  Euripides  . 

VI.  The  Youth  of  Xenophon 
VII.  Persia 

VIII.  The  Anabasis     . 
IX.  The  New  Age     . 
X.  The  House  of  Pasion    . 
XI.  Country  Life 
XII.  Under  which  King,  Bezonian? 


37 

60 

96 

136 

163 

197 

235 
267 
302 
337 
363 


Index 


401 


FROM  a 

PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 


BY 

T.   R.    GLOVER 

FELLOW   AND   LECTURER   OF    ST    JOHN'S   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE 
AND   UNIVERSITY  LECTURER  IN  ANCIENT  HISTORY 


NEW   YORK 

THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

1917 


o 


FROM    PERICLES   TO   PHILIP 

CHAPTER   I 
THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD 

GOETHE  and  Eckermann  were  once  talking  about 
Schlegel,  and  his  criticisms  of  Eiiripides  came  up,  and 
Goethe,  as  frequently  happened,  said  something  that 
Eckermann  carried  home  with  him  and  wrote  down.  "  If  a 
modern  man  like  Schlegel,"  said  Goethe,  "  must  pick  out 
faults  in  so  great  an  ancient,  he  ought  only  to  do  it  upon 
his  knees."  Goethe  is  profoundly  right ;  the  great  vice  in 
criticism  of  ancient  literature  is  that  the  critic  seems  more 
often  anxious  to  find  out  what  is  wrong  than  what  is  right. 
Something  must  be  very  right  indeed  in  a  man's  work  if  it  can 
hold  and  delight  mankind  centuries  after  he  is  dead  and  gone, 
and  not  only  his  fellow-countrymen,  but  every  foreigner  also, 
who  can  even  with  a  lexicon's  aid  pick  out  his  meaning  and 
who  has,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  any  idea  of  what  a 
book  is.  For  it  is  only  to  the  sympathetic,  to  those  who 
somehow  have  the  right  instinct,  that  a  book  will  reveal  itself. 
Books  are  strange  things  and  have  strange  ways — like  certain 
insects,  when  they  feel  themselves  in  wrong  hands,  they  will 
sham  dead.  With  the  great  writers  of  ancient  Greece  this 
often  happens,  and  men  say  they  are  dull,  and  find  faults  in 
them  ;  but  when  they  reach  the  right  hands,  they  change 
and  live  and  move,  and  even  the  barest  minimum  of  Greek 
will  let  the  right  man  see  that  they  too  are  right,  and  life 
begins  anew  with  all  its  gladness  and  variety. 

Herodotus  is  an  author  who  has  suffered  terrible  things 
from  clever  critics  in  ancient  days  and  in  our  own.  But  if 
ever  a  writer  gave  delight  to  his  readers,  held  their  attention, 


3  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  won  their  affection,  it  is  Herodotus ;  so  that  it  seems 
clear  that  he  must  be  more  than  Plutarch  and  Professor  Sayce 
would  suggest.  This  chapter  will  be  devoted  to  the  discovery, 
so  far  as  is  possible,  of  some  of  those  features  of  his  work  and 
character  that  have  stood  the  test  of  time,  and  have  endeared 
him  to  his  readers. 

We  might  begin  by  speaking  of  the  width  of  his  interests 
and  of  his  sympathies.  He  is  so  intensely  human  that  nothing 
that  touches  human  life,  nothing  that  quickens  men's  thoughts, 
or  makes  their  hearts  beat,  fails  to  appeal  to  him.  All  the 
business  of  all  the  world  is  his,  and  he  enjoys  it.  If,  like 
Greeks  of  his  day,  he  thinks  of  human  life  in  the  abstract,  he 
may  share  their  doubts  of  it.  "  Short  as  life  is,"  says  Arta- 
banus,  "  there  is  no  man  so  happy,  no  man  among  all  these, 
nor  anywhere  else,  to  whom  it  will  not  come  often,  and  not 
once  only,  to  wish  to  die  rather  than  to  live  "  (vii.  46).  "  Not 
to  be  born  is,  past  all  prizing,  best,"  said  Herodotus*  friend, 
Sophocles  {O.C.  1227) — or  rather,  so  says  the  chorus  in  the 
play  of  Sophocles,  for  Sophocles  was  a  poet,  and  a  poet  draws 
many  conclusions  from  life,  and  in  a  certain  sense  the  more 
inconsistent  they  are  the  better.  But  if  Herodotus  sighs  with 
Artabanus,  when  he  thinks  of  life  in  the  abstract,  when  he 
comes  to  actual  life,  whether  it  is  only  the  bandages  the  Persians 
use  with  the  wounded  (vii.  181)  or  the  horns  of  the  cattle 
which  the  Libyans  keep  (iv.  183),  whether  it  is  the  strange 
practice  of  making  butter  that  prevails  among  the  Scythians 
(iv.  2)  or  the  sugar-making — honey,  he  calls  it — of  the  Libyans, 
who  smear  themselves  red  and  eat  monkeys  ("  and  they  have 
plenty  of  monkeys  in  their  mountains,"  iv.  194) — life  is  too 
interesting  to  be  sighed  over.  There  then  is  one  element  of 
his  great  charm — "  the  world's  no  blot  for  him,  nor  blank," 
but  various  and  bright  with  life,  always  something  to  catch 
the  eye  and  to  wake  the  mind. 

Herodotus  is  thoroughly  Greek  here.  "  Oh !  Solon ! 
Solon !  "  says  the  old  Egyptian  in  the  Timaeus  (22  b),  "  you 
Greeks  are  always  children  .  .  .  you  are  all  young  in  your 
souls."  It  is  a  true  judgment.  Young  they  all  were  in  soul, 
busy,  curious,  and  open-eyed,  till  they  found  out  how  great 
they  were,  and  grew  didactic  and  dull. 

The  open  eye  and  heart  of  Herodotus  call  down  on  him 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD    3 

the  anger  of  Plutarch — "  he  is  such  a  lover  of  barbarians  !  "  ^ 
(of/Toj  Be  (J3i\o^dp^ap6<i  iariv) — he  says  the  Greeks  learnt 
their  cults  from  the  Egyptians,  that  Thales  was  Phoenician  by 
descent,  and  Isagoras  Carian  ;  he  makes  Artemisia  queen  of 
Halicarnassus,  "  his  own  countrywoman,"  more  gifted  with 
foresight  than  Themistocles  ;  and  he  persistently  diminishes 
the  glory  of  the  Greeks — Thermopylae,  Salamis,  Plataea,  it  is 
all  the  same  story ;  and  finally  he  says  that  the  Persians  at 
the  battle  of  Plataea  were  not  inferior  in  spirit  or  courage  to 
the  Spartans.  He  loves  barbarians ;  beware  of  him,  says 
Plutarch — "  the  man  can  write  and  draw  you  pictures  ;  his 
tale  is  charming  ;  there  is  grace  and  cunning  and  beauty  in 
his  narratives  ...  he  beguiles  and  leads  astray,"  and  by 
reviling  and  insinuation  he  lessens  the  glory  of  Hellas.  So 
Plutarch  stands  up  to  him  "  for  our  ancestors  and  for  truth."  ^ 
That  Herodotus  should  be  accused  of  making  his  readers  think 
ill  of  the  Greeks  comes  strangely  to  us,  till  we  remember  that 
Plutarch  and  his  contemporaries  were  exceedingly  sensitive  to 
the  criticism  of  the  Romans  and  uncomfortable  about  any 
gap  in  their  armour.  But  his  blame  for  Herodotus  as  a  frienc 
of  the  foreigner  points  surely  to  another  element  in  Herodotus 
greatness. 

Herodotus  was  perhaps  helped  to  this  power  of  under- 
standing men  of  alien  speech  and  alien  thought  by  the  ver  - 
circumstances  of  his  birth  and  upbringing.  Halicarnassus,  hi ; 
birthplace,  was  a  Dorian  colony  from  Troezen,  planted  long 
ago  in  Caria  (vii.  99).^  As  in  many  of  the  Greek  cities  of  Asir, 
Minor  there  was  a  strong  infusion  of  Carian  blood  in  th 
people,  and  Halicarnassus  was  in  a  sense  a  town  apart,  ex- 
cluded from  the  common  worship  of  the  Dorian  cities,  it:^ 
neighbours  (i.  144).  It  is  noteworthy  that  critical  as  Herodotus 
frankly  is  of  "  lonians,"  for  Carians  he  has  perhaps  no  unkinc' 
word.  That  he  should  write  an  Ionic  dialect  seemed  to  later 
Greeks  to  need  explanation,  and  in  Suidas'  lexicon,  which 

1  Note  also  the  quite  friendly  tone  of  Herodotus  in  referring  to 
Greek  exiles  among  the  Persians — e.g.  Demaratus.  Cf.  Thucydides 
on  Alcibiades  and  Tissaphernes. 

^  Plut.  de  malignitate  Herodoti,  §§  12,  13,  15,  23,  38,  43,  and  i. 

^  The  tradition  at  least  was  that  Troezen  was  the  mother-city. 
See  How  and  Wells,  ad  loc.  ;  also  on  i.  144,  145, 


4  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

belongs  to  the  tenth  century  ad.,  we  are  told  that  he  learnt 
the  dialect  in  exile  at  Samos.  But  from  the  evidence  of 
inscriptions  modern  scholars  draw  another  conclusion — that 
Herodotus  learnt  his  dialect  in  his  own  home  from  his  mother 
and  his  nurse,  and  spoke  it  from  childhood. ^  It  is  a  curious 
coincidence  that  the  other  great  contemporary  historian  of 
Greece  had  foreign  blood  in  his  veins. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  how  Herodotus  looks  back  to  his 
native  land.  The  lonians  "  had  the  fortune  to  build  their 
cities  in  the  most  favourable  position  for  climate  and  seasons  of 
any  men  we  know  "  ;  ^  and  the  Dorians  were  not  far  away. 
Herodotus  is  constantly  interested  in  climates — the  Egyptians, 
lie  says,  are  the  most  healthy  of  men  after  the  Libyans,  partly, 
he  thinks,  because  of  their  seasons  which  do  not  change,  for 
diseases  are  most  apt  to  be  produced  by  changes  of  seasons 
(ii.  77)  ;  but  after  all,  while  the  ends  of  the  earth  have  allotted 
to  them  by  nature  the  fairest  things — -gold,  cotton,  frankincense, 
and  so  forth — it  is  the  lot  of  Hellas  to  have  its  seasons  far  more 
fairly  tempered  than  other  lands  (iii.  106,  107). ^  As  for  the 
Carians,  they  gave  the  Hellenes  three  warlike  inventions — crests 
on  helmets,  devices  on  shields,  and  handles  instead  of  straps  to 
hold  shields  with  (i.  171)  ;  and  when  the  lonians  first  secured 
the  opening  of  Egypt  for  the  Hellenes,  there  were  Carians  with 
them,  bronzen  men  (ii.  152).  Men  of  war  they  remained,  not 
easily  to  be  conquered  even  by  the  Persians.*  The  Persian  king 
might  be  suzerain,  but  the  queen  or  king  at  Halicarnassus  was 
half  independent.  And  if  we  turn  to  ways  of  peace,  we  learn 
that  the  old  Ionian  dress  of  the  women  was  really  Carian,  "  for 
the  old  Hellenic  fashion  of  dress  for  women  was  everywhere 
the  same  as  that  we  now  caU  Dorian  "  (v.  88). 

In  this  Dorian-Carian  town,  looking  from  its  headland 
across  the  sea,  Herodotus  was  born  (c.  484  B.C.),  and  there  he 
grew  up,  with  open  ears,  we  can  well  believe,  from  earliest 

^  Cf.  Meyer,  Forsch.  i.  197  ;   Ridgeway,  Early  Age  of  Greece,  649  fi. 
2  i.   142.     Cf.  Strabo,  c.  656,  on  climate  of  Halicarnassus  and  its 
influence  ;  also  Pausanias,  vii.  5.  4  ;   Radet,  La  Lydie,  p.  48. 

*  Cf.  dictum  of  Cyrus  on  relation  of  land  and  men,  ix.  122  ;  and 
vii.  5,  the  fair  land  of  Europe  and  its  fruit  trees. 

*  V.  119-121.  Carians,  XevKaa-mdes  (Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  2,  15).  The 
Persians,  because  of  their  crested  helmets,  called  them  cikeKTpvoves  (Plut. 
Artax.  10). 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD    5 

boyhood,  for  the  tales  of  the  men  of  Halicarnassus — how 
Agasicles  won  the  tripod  at  the  games  of  Triopian  Apollo  and 
brought  it  home  against  the  Dorian  rules  (i.  144)  ;  how  Phanes, 
a  man  capable  in  judgment  and  valiant  in  war,  served  with 
King  Amasis  in  Egypt,  till  he  quarrelled  with  the  king  and 
fled  on  shipboard  and  was  caught,  but  not  brought  back,  for  he 
made  his  guards  drunk,  and  escaped  to  Persia,  and  how  he 
helped  King  Cambyses  across  the  desert  on  his  march  to  Eg57pt, 
and  of  the  horrible  vengeance  the  other  Greek  mercenaries  in 
Egypt  took  upon  him  and  were  then  beaten  in  battle  (iii.  4,  n) ; 
and  how  Xeinagoras,  son  of  Prexilaos,  saved  the  life  of  the 
brother  of  King  Xerxes  and  laid  up  thanks  for  himself  with 
Xerxes,  and  became  ruler  of  all  Cilicia  by  the  gift  of  the  King 
(ix.  107).  But  the  most  famous  of  all  was  Queen  Artemisia, 
daughter  of  Lygdamis,  wisest  of  the  counsellors  of  Xerxes. 

"Of  the  rest  of  the  officers,"  Herodotus  wrote  long  after, 
"  I  make  no  mention  (since  I  am  not  bound  to  do  so),  but  only 
of  Artemisia,  at  whom  most  of  all  I  marvel  that  she  took  part 
in  the  expedition  against  Hellas,  though  a  woman  ;  for  after 
her  husband  died,  she  held  the  power  herself,  and,  although 
she  had  a  son  who  was  a  young  man,  she  went  on  the  expedition, 
impelled  by  high  spirit  and  manly  courage,  no  necessity  being 
laid  upon  her.  Now  her  name,  as  I  said,  was  Artemisia,  and 
she  was  the  daughter  of  Lygdamis,  and  by  descent  she  was  of 
Halicarnassus  on  her  father's  side,  and  on  her  mother's  a 
Cretan.  She  commanded  the  men  of  Halicarnassus  and  Kos 
and  Nisyros  and  Calydna,  furnishing  five  ships  ;  and  of  all  the 
fleet,  after  those  of  the  Sidonians,  her  ships  were  counted  the 
best ;  and  of  all  his  allies  she  set  forth  the  best  counsels  to  the 
King  "  (vii.  99). 

There  was  another  Lygdamis  of  whom  Herodotus  must  have 
heard  a  good  deal  in  his  youth,  though  he  does  not  mention  him. 
For  Artemisia  left  a  son  called  Pisindehs,  and  this  man's  son 
Lygdamis  was  tyrant  or  king  of  Halicarnassus  in  his  turn. 
And  here  we  depend  on  the  lexicon  of  Suidas,  and  whence  that 
work  derived  its  information  we  do  not  know,  but  much  of  it 
can  only  have  come  in  the  long  run  from  Halicarnassus  itself. 

There  was  then  in  Halicarnassus  a  man  named  Panyasis, 
son  of  Polyarchus,  a  "  seer  of  signs  "  and  a  poet,  who  revived 
epic  poetry  which  had  now  well-nigh  died  down  to  ashes.     He 


6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

had  a  brother  called  Lyxes,  or  a  sister  Rhoio — more  probably 
the  former  perhaps  ;  and  Lyxes  married  a  woman  with  a  Doric 
name,  Dry 6,  and  had  two  sons,  Herodotus  and  Theodorus — 
theophoric  names,  both  with  a  hint  of  piety.  The  family  was 
one  of  the  better  sort  {tmv  ein^avwv)}  Panyasis  wrote  an 
epic  on  Herakles,  which  some  put  next  Homer,  and  others  after 
Hesiod  and  Antimachos,  a  good  deal  lower  down.  For  what- 
ever reason  Lygdamis  saw  fit  to  kill  the  poet ;  and  we  read 
that  the  poet's  nephew,  and  no  doubt  such  others  of  the  family 
as  could  get  away,  removed  to  Samos.  Later  on  Herodotus 
came  back  to  Halicamassus  and  drove  out  the  tjnrant,  but 
afterwards  he  found  himself  the  object  of  some  iU-will  among 
the  citizens,  and  voluntarily  went  to  Thurii,  which  the  Athenians 
were  then  planting.  And  Suidas  concludes  with  the  statement 
that  some  say  he  died  there  and  is  buried  in  the  market-place, 
and  others  that  he  died  in  Pella  in  Macedonia,  for  there  was 
a  story,  which  Suidas  quotes  elsewhere,  that  Herodotus  and 
Hellanicus  lived  for  a  while  together  at  the  court  of  Amyntas, 
successor  of  that  Alexander  of  Macedon  for  whom  Herodotus 
betrays  so  kindly  a  feeling  in  his  story. 

All  this  is  open  to  question,  but  several  things  are  definitely 
known.  Herodotus  clearly  lived  in  Samos  at  some  time  or 
other,  as  his  close  acquaintance  with  the  stories  of  Polycrates 
and  other  Samians  ^  shows — ^he  even  gives  the  name  of  the  artist 
who  made  the  famous  ring,  Theodorus,  the  son  of  Telecles 
(iii.  41),  one  of  the  two  men  who  introduced  brassfounding  into 
Greece  (i.  51)  ;  and  he  pauses  (iii.  60)  to  speak  with  admiration 
of  three  works  at  Samos,  greater  than  any  made  by  Hellenes — viz. 
the  temple  of  Hera,  the  largest  temple  known,  first  designed  by 
Rhoecus,  son  of  Philes,  a  Samian,  and  spared  by  the  Persians  on 
the  suppression  of  the  Ionic  Revolt ;  the  mole  round  the 
harbour,  twenty  fathoms  deep  and  more  than  two  furlongs  in 
length  ;  and  the  famous  tunnel  which  carried  the  water  seven 
furlongs  through  the  mountain  ridge.     The  tunnel  is  mentioned 

^  This  view  is  held  by  E.  Meyer,  Forsch.  i.  193,  and  Busolt,  who 
find  in  Herodotus'  remark  (ii.  143),  icai  c/xoi  ov  yeverjkoyrfdavTi  e/xewvrdi/,  a 

suggestion  that  he  could  have  unfolded  a  pedigree — i.e.  was  of  the  old 
nobility. 

^  For  example,  the  Samians  who  distinguished  themselves  in  the 
Persian  side  in  the  battle  of  Salamis  (viii.  85)  and  were  rewarded  by 
Xerxes. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   7 

nowhere  else  in  ancient  literature,  and  all  trace  of  it  was  lost  till 
1878,  when  it  was  found  by  accident,  and  some  part  of  it  cleared 
and  restored.^ 

That  Lygdamis  had  trouble  with  his  subjects  or  fellow- 
citizens  was  in  any  case  likely,  and  it  is  proved  by  an  inscrip- 
tion now  in  the  British  Museum,  which  Sir  Charles  Newton 
found  at  Halicarnassus.^  Scholars  date  the  stele  between 
460  and  455  B.C.  It  contains  an  agreement  between  Lygdamis 
and  the  citizens  of  Halicarnassus  and  Salmakis,  relative  to  the 
return  of  exiles  and  their  reinstatement  in  their  lands  and  houses. 
A  tribute-list  setting  forth  payments  made  by  her  allies  to 
Athens  in  the  year  454  B.C.  mentions  the  Halicarnassians 
among  other  tributaries — evidence  that  Lygdamis  was  gone.^ 
What  part  Herodotus  had  or  had  not  in  all  these  transactions 
can  only  be  guessed. 

But  there  is  no  doubt  about  his  sentiments  as  to  tyrants. 
In  a  famous  passage  in  his  Third  Book  there  stands  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Persian  nobles,  who  overthrew  the  false  Smerdis, 
as  to  the  type  of  government  it  would  be  well  to  establish. 
Otanes  pleads  for  Democracy.^  "  Monarchical  power,"  he 
urges,  "  would  set  even  a  good  man  outside  the  ordinary 
thoughts  " — that  sense  of  limitation  and  restriction  which 
works  for  sanity  in  ordinary  intercourse.  Plato's  myth  of 
the  ring  that  made  Gyges  invisible  shows  how  Gyges  got 
outside  ordinary  thoughts.  "  A  tyrant  disturbs  the  customs 
handed  down  from  of  old,  he  does  violence  to  women,  and  he 
puts  men  to  death  without  trial.  On  the  other  hand,"  continues 
Otanes,  "  the  rule  of  the  many  has  a  name  which  is  the  most 
beautiful  of  names.  Equality  "  {irpwrov  jxev  ovvo/jia  irdvrcov  koK- 
Xiarov  e-xet  laovo/jLiTjv).  A  German  scholar,  Maass,  has  suggested 
that  the  whole  discussion  was  quietly  taken  from  Protagoras. 
Eduard  Meyer  emphatically  rejects  this  :  "  Maass  makes  him 
outright  a  Dummkopf."  Herodotus  himself  found  the  story 
challenged,  for  in  another  passage  he  refers  to  people  who 

^  Cf .  Michaelis,  Archcsological  Discoveries,  p.  187;  H.  F.  Tozer, 
Islands  of  the  Aegaean,  ch.  viii.  ;  J.  Irving  Manatt,  Aegaean  Days, 
p.  206. 

*  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Inscr.,  No.  27. 
^  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Inscr.,  No.  ^^. 

*  Herodotus,  iii.  80. 


8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

would  not  believe  such  a  debate  had  taken  place,  and  he 
produces  another  fact  which  he  says  will  astonish  them  (vi.  43). 
He  evidently  believed  the  story  himself.^  It  probably  came 
from  some  of  those  Persian  friends  to  whom,  as  we  shall  see, 
he  owes  a  great  deal  of  important  information,  for  there  were 
Philhellenes  among  the  Persians  as  well  as  among  the  Egyptians. 

But  the  strong,  wholesome  democratic  flavour  of  the  advice 
of  Otanes  is  clearly  to  the  historian's  mind.  When  he  tells 
of  the  liberation  of  Athens  from  her  tyrants,  and  then  of  her 
great  victory  on  one  and  the  same  day  over  Boeotians  and 
Chalcidians  (506  B.C.),  and  cites  the  inscription  recalling  i+  Z" 
he  goes  on  to  add  :  "It  is  evident  not  by  one  instance  only, 
but  in  every  way,  that  Equality  (la-rjyopir])  is  a  good  thing 
(cnrovBaLov) ;  for  the  Athenians,  while  they  were  under 
tyrants,  were  not  better  in  war  than  any  of  their  neighbours, 
but,  once  rid  of  the  tyrants,  they  became  far  the  first.  .  .  . 
When  once  they  had  been  set  free,  each  was  eager  to  achieve 
something  for  himself  "  (v.  78).^  Yet  the  other  two  speeches 
in  the  Persians'  discussion  show  that  Herodotus  was  not 
bhnd  to  the  drawbacks  of  Democracy — few  thoughtful  lovers 
of  it  are — ^nor  blind  to  the  advantages  of  aristocracy  and 
monarchy.  The  many  tyrants  mentioned  in  his  pages  fare 
well  at  his  hands  ;  he  is  far  too  much  interested  in  them  to 
be  angry  with  them.  Herodotus  believed  that  on  the  whole 
more  could  be  made  of  life  under  a  democracy ;  so  he  was  a 
democrat  and  a  friend  of  Athens.* 

That  he  took  part  in  the  colonization  of  Thurii  is  established 
on  the  evidence  of  Aristotle  and  Plutarch  and  the  general 
belief  of  antiquity  ;  and  it  is  confirmed  by  his  full  knowledge 
of  persons  and  places  in  Italy  and  Sicily.     To  illustrate  the 

^  Grundy  {Persian  War,  p.  266)  remarks  that  Herodotus  had  "  a 
certain  amount  of  critical  acumen  which  the  extreme  simpHcity  of  his 
language  has  a  tendency  to  conceal." 

2  Two  fragments  of  it  survive,  which  prove  that  he  saw  it  in  a  restored 
form. 

^  Meyer,  Forsch.  ii.  226. 

*  A  strong  love  of  liberty  and  democracy  is  not  incompatible  with 
indifference  as  to  the  particular  constitutional  arrangements  a  demo- 
cratic community  uses  at  one  time  or  another.  Herodotus  seems  not 
very  clear  as  to  Athenian  strategoi  and  archons,  and  wrong  as  to  the 
naukraroi  (v.  71  ;  vi.  109). 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD    9 

general  shape  and  lie  of  the  Tauric  Chersonese  he  compares 
it  to  the  promontory  of  Sunium — "  for  him,  however,  who  has 
not  sailed  along  this  part  of  the  coast  of  Attica,  I  will  make 
it  clear  by  another  comparison  : — ^it  is  as  if  in  lapygia  another 
race  and  not  the  lapygians  had  cut  off  for  themselves  and 
were  holding  that  extremity  of  the  land  which  is  bounded 
by  a  line  beginning  at  the  harbour  of  Brentesion  and  running 
to  Taras  "  (iv.  99).  He  has  tales  which  he  could  only  have 
learnt,  one  might  say,  among  the  Italiot  Greeks — of  Democedes, 
the  Crotoniate  physician,  who  was  held  in  such  high  honour 
at  the  court  of  Darius,  and  what  difficulty  he  had  in  getting 
away,  and  of  the  message  he  sent  to  the  king  that  he  was 
married  to  the  daughter  of  Milon,  "  for  the  wrestler  Milon  had 
a  great  name  at  the  king's  court  "  (iii.  125-138) ;  of  Dionysius, 
who,  after  the  collapse  of  the  lonians  at  the  battle  of  Lade, 
escaped  to  Sicily  and  commenced  pirate,  plundering  "  none 
of  the  Greeks  at  all,  but  Carthaginians  and  Etruscans  "  (vi.  17) ; 
of  Carthaginian  invaders  of  Sicily  and  the  house  of  Gelon 
at  Syracuse  ;  and  of  the  terrible  battle  in  which  the  Taren tines 
and  their  allies  from  Rhegium  lost  so  many  men,  the  latter 
three  thousand,  while  of  the  Taren  tines  there  was  no  numbering 
made — in  fact,  "  the  greatest  slaughter  of  Hellenes  that  we 
know  "  (vii.  170). 

Thus  far  authority  takes  us — the  youth  at  Halicarnassus, 
the  troublous  times  under  the  tyrant,  and  the  disastrous 
settlement  at  Thurii,  for  the  colony  was  one  of  Pericles'  failures.^ 
And  what  happened  next  ?  That  is  a  problem  as  soon  as  we 
touch  detail.  Thurii  was  planted  in  443  B.C.,  and  Herodotus 
mentions  one  or  two  occurrences  in  the  first  two  or  three 
years  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  If  we  allow  him  fifteen 
years  of  life  after  his  becoming  a  Thurian,  it  is  probably  all 
he  had.  Where  we  suppose  he  went  depends  on  a  good  many 
things,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  choice.  There  is  his  great 
history  and  there  are  his  travels — each  must  have  taken  a 
long  time.  Did  he  make  his  travels  before  he  went  to  Thurii, 
or  after — always  disallowing  the  mean  suggestion  that  a  good 

^  Thurii  :  Meyer,  Gr.  G6sch.  iv.  24  ;  Diod.  Sic.  xi.  90,  xii.  9  ff.,  after 
Timaeus  (a  Sicilian)  ;  Strabo,  c.  263  ;  Plut.  Pericles,  1 1  ;  Nicias,  5  ; 
Aristophanes,  Nub.  332;  Aristotle,  Pol.  v.  3,  12,  p.  1303  a;  7,  9,  12, 
p.  1307,  a.  b. 


10  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

many  of  his  journeys  were  in  other  men's  books  ?  When  and 
where  did  he  write  his  own  nine  books,  and  which  did  he 
write  first  ?  Did  he  begin  with  Book  vii.,  the  expedition  of 
Xerxes,  and  write  the  others  after  an  interval,  in  which  he 
travelled  ?  A  good  many  other  questions  are  bound  up  with 
these. 

A  certain  tone,  for  instance,  is  to  be  felt  in  Books  vii.  to  ix., 
when  Herodotus  writes  of  the  gods  and  other  divine  beings 
and  their  part  in  the  war,  which  is  missed  in  the  earlier  books. 
Does  it  imply  that  Herodotus  was  an  orthodox  believer  when 
he  wrote  the  war  of  Xerxes,  that  he  afterwards  travelled,  and 
in  Egypt  became  involved  in  speculations  which  warred 
against  a  conventional  orthodoxy  ?  Or  is  it  possible  that  a 
man  of  open  mind  and  many  thoughts,  when  he  came  to  the 
great  deliverance,  felt  with  so  many  of  his  countrymen  that  the 
cause  lay  not  in  man's  valour  alone,  nor  in  the  wisdom  of 
Themistocles  (whom  Herodotus  did  not  highly  esteem),  but 
beyond — flavit  Deus  et  dissipati  sunt  ?  ^ 

Then,  again,  practical  questions  arise.  How  far  was  it 
possible  for  a  Greek  to  travel  in  the  Persian  Empire  before 
the  pacification  of  CaUias  in  448  B.C.  ?  ^  Egypt  in  rebellion 
from  460  to  454 — war  in  Cyprus  again  in  449,  if  it  had  ever 
left  off  for  ten  years — was  it  open  to  a  Halicarnassian  to  go 
where  an  Athenian  and  an  Ionian  might  not — for  it  seems 
trade  between  the  interior  and  the  coast  cities  was  interrupted 
— when  Halicamassus  was  a  part  of  the  Athenian  Empire, 
and  the  particular  Halicarnassian  an  exile  and  an  especially 
warm  admirer  of  Athens  and  of  Pericles  ?  ^  What  welcome 
would  have  waited  him  in  Tyre,  the  very  centre  of  Persian 
naval  activity  against  Greece  and  the  fleets  of  Cimon?  To 
Tyre,  he  says,  he  went  from  Egypt  (ii.  44),  and  in  Egypt  it  is 

^  Cf.  Herodotus,  viii.  13,  eVoieerd  re  ivav  vnb  tov  6eov  okcos  av  e^KTCodeir] 
Tm  'EWrjviKM  TO  HefjaiKov  /xr/Se  TroXXa  ttXcoj/  etrj.  Also  viii.  109,  Speech 
attributed  to  Themistocles,  rade  yap  ov<  fjfxels  Karepyaa-dfieOa  dWa  6eoi 
re  Koi  rjpaes.  Cf.  Meyer,  iii.  §  210.  Aeschylus  and  Herodotus  show  a 
feeling  that  the  result  of  the  war  was  a  wonder.  Compare  what 
Herodotus  says  of  the  terror  beforehand,  vii.  138,  iv  deifxari  peyaXa. 

2  On  this  question  as  to  Herodotus  being  able  to  travel,  see  How 
and  Wells  on  vii.  151. 

3  We  know  something  of  how  Athens  might  treat  enemies  and  enemy 
property,  but  next  to  nothing  (if  so  much)  about  Persian  practice. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD  ii 

clear  he  was  travelling  a  number  of  years  after  the  battle 
of  Papremis,  which  was  fought  in  460.  He  visited  the  battle- 
field and  examined  the  skulls  of  the  fallen — and  "  the  skulls 
of  the  Persians  are  so  weak  that,  if  you  hit  them  only  with  a 
pebble,  you  will  make  a  hole  in  them,  while  those  of  the 
Egyptians  are  so  exceedingly  strong  that  you  would  hardly 
break  them  if  you  struck  them  with  a  large  stone  "  (iii.  12). 
Herodotus  believed  that  the  difference  between  the  skulls  was 
explained  by  the  Egyptian  habit  of  shaving  the  head — the 
bone  was  hardened  by  exposure  to  the  sun — and  the  Persian 
practice  of  wearing  "  tiaras,  that  is,  felt  caps."  Whatever  the 
answer  to  the  physiological  problem — and  it  reveals  something 
of  the  historian's  many-sidedness — it  looks  as  if  the  visit  to 
the  field  of  Papremis  must  have  been  quite  a  number  of  years 
after  460.  It  might  have  been  possible  after  the  destruction 
of  the  Athenian  forces  in  Egypt  in  454,  but  it  would  have  been 
safer  after  448. 

Other  travels  have  to  be  fitted  in — Tyre  after  Egypt, 
with  the  suggestion  that  it  may  have  been  immediately — 
Babylonia  too — for  his  language  about  the  millet-fields  implies 
a  visit  (i.  193  ;  cf.  i.  183).^  A  phrase  (ii.  150)  suggests  that 
he  visited  Babylonia  before  Egypt.  In  addition  there  are 
travels  in  the  North  :  in  Thasos  he  saw  the  wonderful  old 
Phoenician  mines  (vi.  47),  Samothrace  he  visited  perhaps 
(ii.  51),  Thrace  (vii.  115),  the  Black  Sea  (iv.  85),  Colchis 
(ii.  104),  and  perhaps  Macedon,  where  his  hero,  Alexander, 
died  in  454.2  Sardis  (i.  80-84)  was  nearer  home,  though  here 
again  war  might  hinder  a  visit,  while  Cyrene  and  North 
Africa,  if  he  visited  them,  were  in  another  direction.  He  says 
he  was  at  Dodona  (ii.  52)  and  at  Zacynthos  (iv.  195)  ;  and  it  is 
fairly  clear  that  he  must  have  lived  for  some  time  in  Athens, 
and  visited  Sparta. 

The  questions  have  been  asked  with  what  object  Herodotus 
travelled,^  and  how  an  exile  paid  his  way  upon  so  many  journeys ; 

1  This  is  accepted  by  Busolt  ^,  il.  606. 

2  Grundy,  Persian  War,  p.  220 :  Herodotus'  description  of  the  coast 
route  implies  a  journey  through  Macedonia  to  N.  Greece  ;  p.  223,  also 
in  Thessaly  the  evidence  of  -"  autopsy  "  is  overwhelming. 

^  For  the  objects  of  his  travel,  see  How  and  Wells,  Intr.  p.  17,  where 
suggestions  pointing  to  trade  are  set  out.  He  probably  did  most  of 
his  journeys  like  a  Greek,  by  sea. 


12  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

for  Greek  exiles  generally  were  cut  off  from  all  their  possessions 
— all  that  could  be  confiscated.  It  is  suggested  that  his  interest 
in  trade  points  to  the  answer.  He  may,  others  suggest,  have 
been  a  Logopoios  ^ — a  professional  teller  of  tales.  Certainly 
nobody  tells  them  better.  Witness  the  tale  of  how  Croesus 
tried  the  oracles,  how  he  sent  messengers  to  every  oracle  in 
Greece  and  Libya  to  "  find  out  what  knowledge  they  had," 
and  how  he  charged  each  man  of  them  that  on  the  hundredth 
day  after  his  departure  he  should  ask  the  oracle,  to  which  he 
was  sent,  what  Croesus,  the  son  of  Alyattes,  King  of  the 
Lydians,  chanced  to  be  doing  on  that  day,  and  should  write 
down  the  answer.  This  was  done,  and  the  messenger  from 
Delphi  brought  back  five  strange  hexameters,  in  which  Croesus 
recognized — and  there  alone — that  one  god  at  least  had  seen 
him  on  that  hundredth  day,  boiling  pieces  of  a  tortoise  and  of 
a  lamb  in  a  cauldron  of  bronze,  with  a  cover  of  bronze  over  them 
(i.  47,  48).  The  story  moves  on  its  way  till  the  strange  message 
of  Apollo  comes,  and  Croesus  examines  all  the  rest,  and  then 
at  last  we  are  told  what  Croesus  had  in  fact  been  doing.  It 
looks  as  if  Herodotus  had  tried  his  stories  often  by  word  of 
mouth  before  he  wrote  them  down.  Their  management  and 
the  language  imply  the  story  told  to  listeners  who  watch  the 
narrator — conversation  sublimated.  And  it  is  clear  that 
wherever  he  went,  he  drew  stories  from  the  men  he  met,  and  it 
is  not  to  every  one  that  men  will  tell  stories.  Whether  money 
was  given  him  or  not,  we  cannot  say,  but  we  can  believe  that 
few  men  could  have  had  so  many  friends  about  the  Mediter- 
ranean, Greek,  Persian,  Egyptian,  and  Macedonian. 

Whatever  the  avowed  objects  of  his  journeys  may  have 
been,  his  purpose  was  travel,  at  his  own  easy  pace,  always  at 
leisure  for  life.  The  Greeks  of  his  day  were  interested  in 
Geography ;  Aeschylus  cannot  keep  it  out  of  his  plays  ;  the 
Anap  was  one  of  the  curiosities  of  the  school  of  Socrates, 
'  Aristophanes  would  have  us  believe  ;  and  Plutarch  drew  the 
Athenians  in  416  before  the  Sicilian  Expedition  busy  with  the 
Geography  of  the  West — "  young  men  in  wrestling-grounds, 
and  old  men  in  shops  and  semicircles,  sitting  and  sketching 
the  lie  of  Sicily  and  the  nature  of  the  sea  around  it,  and  the 

^  As  to   the   \oyoiroi6s,    see    Meyer,    Forsch.    ii.    p.    238,    and    ref. 
to  i.  193  ;  iii.  80  ;  vi.  43  ;  Thuc.  i.  20. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD      13 

havens  and  the  regions  where  the  island  is  turned  toward 
Libya."  ^  Gimates  and  products  interested  Herodotus,  as 
we  have  seen,  and  animals,  as  we  shall  see.  But,  most  of  all, 
as  with  the  other  great  traveller  of  Greece,  "  Many  men's 
cities  he  saw  and  learned  their  mind." 

He  did  not  learn  their  languages,  as  his  great  discovery 
about  Persian  names  proves — a  fact  "  which  the  Persians  have 
themselves  failed  to  notice,  but  I  have  not  failed  to  do  so ; 
their  names  are  like  their  bodily  shape  and  their  magnificence, 
and  they  all  end  with  the  same  letter,  that  letter  which  the 
Dorians  call  san  and  the  lonians  sigma  "  (i.  139).  Xerxes 
seems  to  have  spelled  his  name  without  a  final  "  s" — in  spite 
of  Herodotus  and  the  Book  of  Esther — Khsajarsa — simpler 
as  the  Greek  form  sounds  to  Western  ears.  Herodotus,  of 
course,  picked  up  words  here  and  there — he  tells  us  that  the 
Persian  name  for  petroleum  was  rhadinake  (vi.  119),  that  they 
called  a  particular  measure  artabe  (i.  192),  and  thirty  furlongs 
a  P'trroiVrig  (vi.  42) — ^just  as  when  he  deals  ■:  it:\  Jigypt  he  tells 
us  the  Egj^tian  name  for  a  crocodile  champsai  (ii.  69,  repre- 
senting mshu).^  But  he  evidently  found  Persian  friends  who 
could  speak  Greek,  and  as  ever  he  listened  with  open  ears  and 
open  heart.  Some  of  these  have  been  conjecturally  identified 
by  modern  scholars  as  the  satraps  of  Daskyleion,  of  the  house 
of  Artabazos,^  and  Zopyrus,  who  was  an  exile  in  Athens  at 
one  time,  the  son  of  the  Megabyzos  who  reconquered  Eg5^t 
in  454  (iii.  160). 

It  will  not  be  expected  that  everything  these  friends  told 
him  would  of  necessity  be  indisputably  accurate — they  had 
their  lapses  of  memory  and  temper,  and  no  doubt  were  ignorant 
of  much  that  modem  archaeologists  have  since  learnt.  When 
they  told  him  of  the  ancient  history  of  Persia,  they  were  as 
liable  to  error  as  any  of  his  Spartan  or  Samian  informants — 
liable  to  mass  things  into  one  place  and  one  time,  in  accordance 
with  that  instinctive  dramatic  tendency  which  all  men  share — 
liable  to  drop  insignificant  names  and  to  get  significant  ones 

1  Plut.  Nicias,  12.     Cf.  Alcih.  17. 

^  Timseach  to-day,  according  to  Eliot  Warburton,  The  Crescent  and 
the  Cross,  ch.  ix.  p.  85,  whose  rights  to  freedom  of  spelling  should  be  as 
free  as  those  which  Herodotus  assumed. 

2  See  Chapter  VII.  p.  2 10, 


14  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

from  the  wrong  angle.  And  their  guest  recognized  some  of 
their  limitations — they  told  him  among  them  three  several 
stories  about  the  rise  of  Cyrus  ;  and  he  chooses  that  which  the 
Persians  "  who  do  not  wish  to  glorify  C5n:us "  tell  (i.  95). 
Later  on  he  was  certainly  informed  about  Darius  by  Persians 
who  did  not  wish  to  glorify  him  either.  He  listened  and 
noted  and  asked  questions  and  wrote  his  history,  and  if  he 
had  made  no  slips  of  his  own,  he  would  have  been  less  human 
than  he  is.^  One  thing  is  remarked  by  Spiegel  that,  while 
the  tale  of  Cyrus  is  not  historical,  it  has  yet  historical  traits 
and  is  of  high  value,  for,  among  the  fabulous  stories  told  of 
Persia,  there  is  none  "  so  thoroughly  Iranian  "  in  its  general 
character.  2  When  in  1837  the  rock-inscription  of  Behistun 
was  deciphered  by  Henry  Rawlinson,  it  came  to  light  that 
Herodotus'  account  of  the  rise  of  Darius  was  very  much  that 
of  the  king  himself.^  Of  the  seven  conspirators,  who  slew  the 
false  Smerdis,  or  Bardiya,  Herodotus  names  six  aright.  He 
had  never  seen  the  rock,  and  he  could  not  have  read  the 
inscription  if  he  had  seen  it.  As  Spiegel  suggests,  it  speaks 
well  for  the  accuracy  of  his  authorities  * — and  it  says  something, 
too,  for  the  guest  who  listened. 

What  matters  beside  actual  history  he  discussed  with 
his  Persian  friends,  it  is  not  hard  to  trace.  Politics  for  one 
thing  occupied  both  him   and  them — politics   and  political 

1  Grundy,  Persian  War,  p.  340:  "Nature  had  not  made  him  an 
arithmetician  "  ;  p.  354,  a  mistake  in  addition  in  viii.  48  ;  and  an 
error  of  two  days  in  journals  of  Thermopylae  and  Artemisium.  Cf. 
How  and  Wells  on  vii.  187,  a  mistake  in  long  division;  and  on  i.  31,  a 
mistake  in  intercalary  months.  Also  note  that  two  systems  of  chrono- 
logy appear  to  be  loosely  combined,  or  used  as  they  occur.  See  How 
and  Wells,  App.  xiv.  The  main  point  is  that  Herodotus  "  was  ^ot 
interested  in  chronological  questions." 

2  Spiegel,  Eranische  Alterthumer,  ii.  269  ;  and  F.  Justi  in  Geiger 
und  Kuhn,  Grundriss  der  Iranischen  Philologie,  ii.  p.  426. 

^  How  and  Wells,  App.  v.,  point  out  some  misconceptions.  It  was 
really  a  national  movement  led  by  the  rightful  heir  of  the  Achaemenian 
house,  not  the  work  of  a  group  of  conspirators  merely.  The  story 
about  the  horse  is  absurd  ;  it  may  be  due  to  family  of  Otanes.  How 
and  Wells  conclude  that  Herodotus  was  a  faithful  reporter  of  what  he 
was  told  [so  he  says  himself,  vii.  152],  but  that  his  historical  insight 
was  lacking  or  irregular. 

*  Spiegel,  Eranische  Alterthumer.  ii.  310. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   15 

theory — which  form  of  government  is  best,  as  we  have  seen 
(iii.  80-82).  Zopyrus  and  his  house  owed  their  troubles  to 
their  LiberaHsm  and  Philhellenism.  The  government  of  the 
Persian  Empire  and  its  organization  by  Darius  clearly  inter- 
ested Herodotus,  for  he  gives  a  careful  account  of  it  (iii.  90-96),^ 
and  also  of  the  Persian  army  (vii.  61-80),  and  the  Royal  Road 
from  Sardis  to  Susa  (v.  52-54),  and  the  posts  system,  which 
"  they  call  angareion  "  (viii.  98).  Of  the  great  war  their  con- 
versation must  have  been  endless,  but  this  is  not  to  deny  that 
Herodotus  may  have  had  information  in  writing  from  his 
friends. 

Of  Persian  character  it  is  clear  that  he  thought  highly. 
We  have  seen  how  he  praised  Persian  valour  at  the  battle  of 
Plataea  ;  and  elsewhere  he  says,  "  Of  all  men  whom  I  know 
the  Persians  are  most  wont  to  honour  such  as  are  valiant  in 
war  "  (vii.  238).  Next  after  excellence  in  fight  they  honour 
the  possession  of  many  sons,  and  they  educate  their  boys  from 
five  years  old  to  twenty  in  three  things  only,  to  ride  the  horse, 
to  shoot  with  the  bow,  and  to  tell  the  truth  (i.  136).  Wha 
they  may  not  do,  they  may  not  speak  of ;  but  the  greatest 
disgrace  of  all  with  them  is  to  lie,  and,  next  after  that,  to  be  in 
debt,  for  they  hold  that  a  man  in  debt  is  bound  to  lie  a  little 
(i.  138).  It  is  remarkable  in  this  connexion  to  find  the  stress 
laid  by  Darius  in  the  Behistun  inscription  on  truth  and  false- 
hood— "  the  people  became  wicked  and  the  lie  was  great  in 
the  land,"  and  so  forth. ^ 

The  fifth  century  B.C.  was  one  in  which  speculation  as 
to  the  gods  occupied  a  large  place  in  men's  minds.  Wherever 
he  went,  Herodotus  had  a  curious  and  friendly  eye  for  the 
beliefs  of  the  foreigner,  and  Persian  religion  interested  him. 
What  he  tells  us  belongs  more  properly  to  a  later  chapter. 
Meanwhile,  it  is  recognized  that  there  is  a  certain  latent 
sympathy  to  be  felt  in  his  account  of  the  Persian  attitude  to 
the  gods — it  is  in  a  sense  a  criticism  or  a  suggestion  offered  to 
Greece. 3    But  the  way  in  which  it  is  offered  should  be  noted — 

^  On  these  matters,  see  Chapter  VII.  pp.  208  ff. 

2  Some  of  this  will  be  found  again  in  Chapter  VII.,  with  other  matter 
on  Persia  that  we  owe  to  Herodotus, 

^  Grundy  {Persian  War,  p.  35)  remarks  that  it  is  strange  at  first 
that  Persian  monotheism  never  captured  the  Greek  imagination.     The 


i6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  Persian  usage  is  mentioned  incidentally  in  a  general  descrip- 
tion of  Persian  life.  Something  has  impressed  the  writer,  and 
he  records  his  impression  and  offers  it  to  his  readers  for  their 
reflection,  but  neither  by  way  of  propaganda  nor  innuendo. 
The  method  is  simpler — the  simplest  possible — and  not  less 
effective.  Elsewhere  the  tone  is  rather  different — "  the 
Scythians  make  the  rites  of  Bacchus  a  reproach  against  the 
Greeks,  for  they  say  it  is  not  fitting  to  invent  a  god  like  this 
who  drives  men  to  frenzy  "  (iv.  79).  But  to  Bacchic  religion 
we  may  have  to  recur  ;  it  was  not  of  the  first  rank  in  the  Greek 
world.  For  the  moment,  it  may  be  observed  that  foreign 
travel  has  done  for  Herodotus  something  of  what  it  did  for 
Xenophanes — it  has  induced  self-criticism  and  the  doubt  as 
to  whether  the  last  word  is  after  all  with  the  Greeks — perhaps 
even  the  first  word  was  not. 

In  many  ways  the  Second  Book  is  the  most  interesting  part 
'of  Herodotus'  history,  for  there  he  treats  of  Egypt.  Egypt 
from  the  very  beginning  was  a  surprise  and  a  paradox  to  the 
Greeks.  It  was  to  them  what  Japan  in  one  way  and  Australia 
in  another  have  been  to  Europeans — everything  was  the  wrong 
way  round.  The  fauna  of  Australia,  with  its  kangaroo  and 
omithorhynchus  types,  is  utterly  unlike  that  of  any  other 
continent ;  and  in  the  same  way  Egypt  surprised  the  Greeks. 
Greece  proper  has  no  navigable  river ;  Egypt  is  nothing  else — 
a  country  eight  hundred  miles  long,  and  twenty  or  thirty  broad, 
with  a  delta.  The  delta,  as  Herodotus  says,  is  "  added  land 
and  the  gift  of  the  river  "  (ii.  5),  and  a  very  "  busy  "  river  it 
is  (ii.  11).^  Greek  rivers  often  dry  up  altogether  in  summer, 
but  "  the  Nile  comes  down  increasing  in  volume  from  the 
summer  solstice  onwards  for  a  hundred  days,  and  then,  when 
it  has  come  near  the  number  of  these  days,  it  turns  and  goes 
back,  failing  in  its  stream,  so  that  it  continues  low  all  the  winter 

Greeks  came  to  admire  Persian  virtues,  but  never  grasped  their  spiritual 
and  intellectual  basis. 

1  It  is  not  the  only  one,  for  the  Achelous  "  has  already  made  half 
the  Echinades  from  islands  into  mainland  "  (ii.  10).  Cf.  Mark  Twain's 
account  of  Mississippi  shifting  and  silting.  Life  on  Mississippi,  p.  4 : 
"  Nearly  the  whole  of  that  one  thousand  three  hundred  miles  of  old 
Mississippi  river  which  La  Salle  floated  down  in  his  canoes,  two  hundred 
years  ago,  is  good,  solid,  dry  ground  now;"  and  ch.  xvii.  for  further 
illustrations. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   17 

long  until  the  summer  solstice  again  "  (ii.  19).  No  Egyptian 
could  explain  this  to  Herodotus,  and  he  was  not  satisfied  with 
the  explanations  of  "  certain  Greeks  who  wished  to  be  notable 
for  their  wisdom"  (ii.  20).  The  Egyptian  towns  standing 
out  of  the  water  in  flood-time  recalled  the  Cyclades  (ii.  gy).^ 
The  lizards  of  Greece  are  little  creatures  ;  the  same  sort  of 
thing  in  Egypt,  "  of  all  mortal  things  that  we  know,  grows 
to  the  greatest  bulk  from  the  smallest  beginnings  ;  for  its  eggs 
are  not  much  larger  than  those  of  geese,  and  the  young  one  is 
in  proportion  to  the  egg,  but  he  keeps  on  growing  till  he  is 
seventeen  cubits  long  and  even  larger  yet"  (ii.  68).  The 
hippopotamus  again  was  almost  as  strange  as  the  crocodile 
(ii.  71) ;  and  men  told  still  stranger  things  about  a  holy  bird 
called  the  phoenix,  but  Herodotus  never  saw  it  himself  (ii.  73). 
Finally,  like  their  climate  and  their  river,  which  are  quite 
unlike  any  others,  the  Egyptians  have  manners  and  customs 
in  a  way  opposite  to  other  men  in  almost  all  matters  (ii.  35). 
Women  go  to  market  and  men  stay  at  home  and  weave,  and 
they  weave  down  where  others  weave  up.  Men  carry  loads 
on  their  heads ;  women  on  their  shoulders.  They  eat  out 
of  doors.  No  god  or  goddess  has  a  priestess,  nothing  but 
men  priests,  who,  unlike  priests  elsewhere,  shave  their  heads 
instead  of  wearing  long  hair  ;  but  they  let  it  grow  as  a  sign  of 
mourning  instead  of  cutting  it.  Men  and  beasts  live  together  ; 
and  men  and  women  refuse  to  eat  food  made  of  wheat  or  barley. 
They  knead  dough  with  their  feet  and  clay  with  their  hands. 
They  make  fast  the  rings  and  ropes  of  boats  inside  the  gunwale 
and  not  outside.  Greeks  write  from  left  to  right,  but  Egyptians 
write  from  right  to  left  and  have  two  scripts.  Their  religious 
rites  are  their  own,  though  these  have  influenced  the  beliefs 
and  rituals  of  Greece.  They  are  divided  into  castes,  and 
the  priests  have  a  very  special  position  ;  and  (which  is  very 
strange)  "  no  Egyptian  man  or  woman  will  kiss  a  Greek  on 

1  Cf.  Eliot  Warburton,  The  Crescent  and  the  Cross,  p.  21,  on  the  Nile 
in  flood.  "  The  stream  .  .  .  spreads  abroad  its  beneficent  deluge  over 
the  vast  valley.  Then  it  is  that  Egypt  presents  the  most  striking  of  its 
Protean  aspects,  becoming  an  archipelago  studded  with  green  islands, 
and  bounded  only  by  the  chain  of  the  Lybian  Hills  and  the  purple 
range  of  the  Mokattam  Mountains.  Every  island  is  crowned  with  a 
village  or  an  antique  temple,  and  shadowy  with  palm-trees  or  acacia 
groves.  Every  city  becomes  a  Venice." 
2 


i8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  mouth,  nor  use  a  Greek's  knife,  nor  his  spits,  nor  kettle, 
nor  taste  the  flesh  of  a  clean  cow  if  cut  with  a  Greek's  knife  " 
(ii.4i).| 

TUl  the  nineteenth  century  Herodotus  was  our  oldest, 
fullest,  and  brightest  source  of  knowledge  about  ancient 
Egypt ;  but,  with  the  decipherment  of  the  actual  monuments 
of  the  Pharaohs  and  the  growing  accessibility  of  Egyptian 
documents,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Eg57ptologists  to-day 
know  vastly  more  about  Egypt's  history  than  Herodotus  was 
able  to  learn  from  what,  rather  ungratefully,  one  of  them 
calls  "  the  current  gossip  of  the  traders,  guides,  and  priests 
whom  he  met  there."  Herodotus  tangles  the  dynasties,  he 
is  ignorant  "  even  of  the  most  important  phases  of  the  history," 
and  he  weaves  into  his  narrative  fairy  tales  of  Rhampsinitus 
and  impossible  legends  of  Sesostris  ;  he  attributes  Hittite 
monuments  in  Western  Asia  Minor  to  the  Egyptian  conqueror 
who  never  was  there  ;  and,  in  addition  to  believing  the  tales 
of  his  informants,  he  is  guilty  of  increasing  the  confusion  by 
blunders  of  his  own.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Llewelyn  Griffith, 
the  author  of  these  criticisms,^  admits  that  he  gives  fairly 
accurately  the  names  and  the  succession  of  the  builders  of 
the  three  Great  Pyramids,  and  shows  "  a  decided  improve- 
ment "  when  he  comes  to  the  history  of  the  last  two  centuries 
— the  Saite  and  Persian  kings.  This  praise  is  qualified  by  the 
complaint  as  to  "  the  frequent  absence  of  even  superficial  know- 
ledge "  of  the  country  ;  "his  few  geographical  remarks  upon 
it  seem  only  to  show  his  complete  ignorance  of  Eg5rpt  above 
Memphis,"  and  his  "  picturesque  touches  are  exceedingly  few." 

One  feels  that  the  critic  wishes  the  author  to  share  his 
interests  instead  of  illuminating  his  own.  The  fact  is  that  the 
ancient  writer  and  traveller-  neither  notice  nor  record  quite 
the  things  that  modems  would  wish  or  expect.  Where  we 
are  careful,  they  are  careless — about  dates  and  distances  and 
so  forth.  They  look  for  other  things  and  see  them,  and  miss 
what  we  see  at  the  first  glance.  Arguments  have  been  framed 
about  the  dates  of  Herodotus'  life  from  his  failure  to  allude 
to  the  great  Periclean  buildings  on  the  Acropolis.  But  he 
had  no  occasion  to  mention  them.^     The  temples  which  do 

1  In  Authority  and  Archcsology,  pp.  164  ff. 
*  Meyer,  Forsch.  i.  1 5  S  ». 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   19 

interest  him  are  the  big  ones,  at  Samos  and  the  Egyptian 
Thebes  (iii.  60  ;  ii.  143)  ;  and  the  AcropoHs  buildings  were 
not  very  large.  After  all,  the  great  writers  are  great,  not  in 
virtue  of  the  accuracy  of  their  archaeology — even  when  they 
are  historians — but  in  the  measure  in  which  they  absorb  the 
life  of  the  world  they  live  in — its  moving  ideas,  interests, 
prejudices,  hopes,  fears,  darkness,  and  light — and  quicken 
these  anew  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  every  sympathetic  reader. 
A  man  will  not  do  this,  who  is  as  foolish  and  incompetent  as 
the  Herodotus  of  some  critics.  It  is  worth  noting  that  there 
are  Egyptologists  of  competence  who  have  another  opinion 
of  Herodotus.  "He  observed,"  says  Adolf  Erman,  "exactly 
those  things  which  are  of  special  interest  to  us."  It  may  be 
that  Erman  refers  in  particular  to  his  theme  of  Egyptian 
religion,  but  he  calls  Herodotus  "  an  indefatigable  and  careful 
observer."  ^  Finally,  if  what  Herodotus  tells  us  is  not  borne 
out  by  the  ancient  monuments,  it  is  conceivable  that  what 
he  tells  us  was  of  more  moment  in  his  day  than  what  is  actually 
to  be  learnt  from  those  monuments ;  just  as  the  fact  that 
England  in  the  seventeenth  century  believed  Charles  I  wrote 
Eikon  Basilike  is  of  more  historical  significance  than  the 
other  fact  that  he  actually  did  not.  Let  us  pass  to  what 
Herodotus  saw  and  thought  worth  while  to  record. 

We  have  seen  his  comment  on  the  "  busy  "  river  ever  at 
work  giving  land  to  the  people,  and  on  this  strange  people 
who  do  everything  the  wrong  way  round  as  the  Japanese  once 
did.  Most  of  aU  their  religious  usages  were  peculiar.  The 
worship  of  animals  always  struck  the  Greeks  as  in  some  way 
odd.  "  An  Egyptian  temple,  outside  all  splendour,  and  inside 
a  priest  singing  a  hymn  to  a  cat  or  a  crocodile,"  is  a  phrase 
that  occurs  several  times. ^  Wliy  should  the  Egyptians  be 
so  fussy  about  cats  and  dogs  ?  "In  whatever  houses  a  cat 
has  died  by  a  natural  death,"  says  Herodotus  (ii.  66,  67), 
"  all  those  who  dweU  in  this  house  shave  their  eyebrows  only, 

1  Erman,  Egyptian  Religion  (English  translation),  p.  175.  Mr. 
Grundy — it  is  in  another  connexion,  of  course — emphasizes  Herodotus' 
demonstrable  care  and  the  pains  which  he  devoted  to  topography  ;  he 
is  the  best  and  most  conscientious  topographer  in  ancient  history 
{Persian  War,  pp.  223,  559). 

^  Lucian,  Imagines,  1 1  ;  Celsus,  ap.  Orig.  c.  Cels.  iii.  17  ;  Clem. 
Alex.  Paed.  iii.  4.  2. 


20  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

but  those  in  whose  houses  a  dog  has  died  shave  the  whole 
body  and  also  the  head.  The  cats,  when  they  are  dead,  are 
carried  away  to  sacred  buUdings  in  the  city  of  Bubastis, 
where  they  are  embalmed  and  buried  ;  but  the  dogs  they 
bury  each  people  in  their  own  city  in  sacred  tombs  " ;  and 
the  mouse  and  the  sparrowhawk,  the  ibis,  and  especially  the 
bull,  are  similarly  honoured,  while  the  sacred  cows  are  thrown 
into  the  Nile  (ii.  41) .  Modern  discoverers  have  found  cemeteries 
where  cats  were  laid  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  vaults  where 
crocodiles,  their  eggs  and  young  were  buried,  and  the  graves 
of  ibis,  hawk,  serpent,  and  fish.  Indeed,  the  export  of 
mummied  cats  to  be  used  for  manure  has  been  a  modern 
industry  of  Egypt. ^  Apis  is  a  more  familiar  figure  in  story — 
his  miraculous  birth  as  the  child  of  a  flash  of  light,  his  special 
markings,  the  joy  and  festival  that  attend  his  discovery,  his 
life  and  death  in  sanctity — and  the  madness  of  Cambyses  who 
slew  him  wantonly  and  perished  "  wounded  in  the  same  part, 
where  he  had  formerly  struck  Apis,  the  god  of  the  Egyptians."  ^ 

The  festivals  of  the  Egyptians  are  described  by  Herodotus 
vividly  enough — the  draping  of  Amun  in  the  skin  of  the  slain 
ram  (ii.  42),  the  fight  at  the  temple  of  "  Ares  "  at  Papremis 
(ii.  63),  the  illumination  at  Sais  on  one  night  of  the  year 
(ii.  62).  He  tells  how  seventy  myriads  of  men  and  women 
gather  at  Bubastis  every  year,  coming  in  boats  from  all  parts, 
playing  on  flutes  and  castanets,  singing  and  clapping  their 
hands,  and  dancing,  and  how  the  women  pilgrims  taunt  the 
women  of  every  place  the  boats  pass,  and  how  "  more  wine 
is  consumed  at  this  feast  than  in  all  the  rest  of  the  year." 
In  some  of  these  festivals  foreigners  join — the  Carians  dwelling 
in  Egypt  take  more  part  in  the  mourning  at  Busiris  than  the 
Egyptians  themselves  "  inasmuch  as  they  cut  their  foreheads 
also  with  knives ;  and  by  this  it  is  manifested  that  they  are 
strangers  "  (ii.  61)  ;  but,  adds  Herodotus,  "  for  whom  they 
mourn,  it  is  not  permitted  to  me  by  religion  to  say." 

In  fact,  Herodotus  has  been  initiated  into  some  of  the 
mysteries  here  ^  as  elsewhere — "  whosoever  has  been  initiated 
in  the  mysteries  of  the  Kabeiroi,  which  the  Samothracians 
perform,   having   received   them   from   the   Pelasgians,    that 

1  Erman,  Egyptian  Religion,  177.  ^  Herodotus,  iii.  27-29,  64. 

*  So,  too,  ii.  171. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   21 

man  knows  the  meaning  of  my  speech "  (ii.  51).  Ov^ 
oaiov — that  is  the  check  that  seals  his  hps,  evaTOfxa  Keiadco 
(ii.  171).  More  emphasis  has  to  be  laid  on  this  aspect  of  his 
character  than  is  sometimes  done.  "  If  I  should  say  for  what 
reasons  the  sacred  animals  have  been  thus  dedicated,  I  should 
fall  into  discourse  of  matters  pertaining  to  the  gods,  of  which 
I  desire  not  to  speak  ;  and  what  I  have  actually  said,  touch- 
ing slightly  upon  them,  I  said  because  I  was  constrained  by 
necessity  "  (ii.  65).  So  says  Herodotus,  but  in  spite  of  it  some 
critics  are  very  apt  to  find  in  other  passages  a  hint  of  irony 
which  seems  alien  to  his  real  interest  in  the  divine.  Thus, 
when  he  begins  his  story  of  Egypt  (ii.  3),  he  says  that  he  is 
not  eager  to  tell  in  full  the  narratives  he  heard  about  the 
gods,  but  he  will  mention  their  names  only,  "  because  I  think 
that  all  men  are  equally  informed  about  them  "  ;  only  where 
his  story  compels  him  will  he  mention  them.  "la-ov  eTroaraadai 
is  a  remarkable  phrase — does  it  mean  "  know  as  much  "  or 
"know  as  little"  as  one  another?  Before  we  quite  make 
up  our  minds,  let  us  compare  another  passage  :  "  As  to  the 
form  of  the  camel,  I  do  not  here  describe  it,  since  the  Hellenes 
for  whom  I  write  know  about  it ;  but  what  they  do  not  know 
about  it,  I  will  tell "  (iii.  103).  There  is  no  obvious  call  for 
irony  about  the  camel ;  is  there  about  the  Egyptian  gods  ? 

In  this  connexion  it  may  be  worth  remembering  that  in 
1903,  when  Naukratis  was  excavated,  the  base  of  a  vase  was 
found  in  the  remains  of  the  Hellenion  with  the  lettering 
H  . .  AOTOT — an  inscription  not  hard  to  restore  ;  and  the 
question  suggests  itself,  did  the  historian  dedicate  it  ?  Many 
men  called  Herodotus  are  mentioned  in  inscriptions.^  Even 
if  it  was  our  Herodotus  who  dedicated  the  vase,  conformity, 
as  we  all  know  very  well,  is  not  inconsistent  with  irony.  So, 
when  Herodotus,  after  some  speculation  about  Herakles,  ends 
with  the  words  :  "  And  now  that  we  have  said  so  much  about 
-all  this,  may  the  gods  and  the  heroes  be  propitious  "  (ii.  45), 
it  may  be,  as  Prof.  Bury  has  suggested,  "  a  graceful  genu- 

^  See  index  to  Dittenberger's  Sylloge,  and  compare  the  various 
people  called  Thucydides,  Euripides,  Xenophon,  and  the  like,  known 
to  us  in  various  ways— and  the  other  William  Shakespeares  of  Stratford 
and  John  Bunyans  at  and  near  Bedford,  contemporaries  of  the  great 
ones. 


22  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

flexion  "  merely  and  nothing  more.  It  may  be  that  his  blend- 
ing of  "  naivete  and  scepticism  "  is  "  very  piquant  " — that 
he  strikes  "  the  characteristic  note  of  Ionian  scepticism  "  from 
the  first,  as  Prof.  Bm^y  says — that  "  something  closely  akin 
to  cynicism  and  flippancy  is  common  enough  in  Herodotus," 
as  Mr.  Cornford  says  ^ — but  surely  such  a  spirit  is  that  of  a 
man  who  has  made  up  his  mind,  who  is  done  with  religion 
and  theology  ;  and  that  is  assuredly  not  the  position  of 
Herodotus.  His  general  outlook  on  life  {Weltanschauung), 
as  Eduard  Meyer  says,^  did  not  grow  up  on  Ionian  ground.  A 
man  may  despise  the  lonians  and  be  influenced  by  them, 
but  in  any  case  it  may  be  remarked  that  more  is  said  to-day 
about  Miletus  and  the  Milesian  spirit  than  it  is  easy  to  find 
evidence  for ;  and  Meyer  is  surely  right  in  looking  elsewhere 
for  the  spiritual  analogues  of  Herodotus.  Of  irony  he,  like 
all  large  and  various  human  spirits,  is  capable,  but  like  such 
spirits  he  will  not  deal  in  it  alone.  When  Prof.  Bury  says 
he  is  an  "  expert  in  not  committing  himself,"  that  is  surely 
nearer  the  mark,  though  the  phrase  is  not  quite  happy. ^ 
There  may  be  two  reasons  for  a  man  not  committing  himself  : 
he  may  not  know  and  not  care — or  he  may  care  a  good  deal 
and  yet  not  know. 

When  the  great  storm  played  havoc  with  the  fleet  of 
Xerxes,  it  lasted  three  days  ;  "  but  at  last  the  Magians, 
making  sacrifices  and  chanting  aloud  to  the  Wind,  and  sacrific- 
ing to  Thetis  also  and  the  Nereids,  stopped  it  on  the  fourth 
day — or  else,  perhaps,  of  its  own  will  it  slackened  (e/coTracre)  "  ^ 
(vii.  iQi).  It  is  the  perennial  problem  of  prayer  that  Herodotus 
raises.  Again,  is  the  gully  of  the  Peneios  the  work  of  Poseidon, 
as  the  Thessalians  say  ?  It  was  evident  to  Herodotus  that 
it  was  the  effect  of  an  earthquake  ;   but  then  Poseidon  is  the 

1  Since  this  was  first  written,  I  note  that  others  refuse  to  recognize 
Herodotus'  -'  flippant,  Parisian,  man-of-the-worldly  tone."  Cf,  How 
and  Wells  on  Herodotus,  iv.  113. 

2  Forsch.  ii.  264. 

3  Grundy  comes  much  nearer  the  real  thing  in  saying  more  quietly 
that  "  caution  is  a  prominent  characteristic  of  the  man  "  {Persian 
War,  p.  292). 

*  Longinus,  43,  i,  notes  the  word  as  popular  and  undignified, 
aaefjLvop  yap  to  aovidaai  IdiaTiKOv.  It  is  used  of  the  wind  in  St.  Mark, 
iv.  39;  vi.  51. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   23 

author  of  earthquakes,  some  say,  and  therefore  of  the  effects 
of  earthquakes  (vii.  129).  Is  it  divine  interposition  or  natural 
cause  ? 

Before  we  answer  these  questions,  let  us  look  at  two  others. 
John  Evelyn  wrote  in  his  Diary,  12  December,  1680  :  "  We 
have  had  of  late  several  comets,  which  though  I  believe  appear 
from  natural  causes,  and  of  themselves  operate  not,  yet  I  can- 
not despise  them.  They  may  be  warnings  from  God,  as  they 
commonly  are  forerunners  of  his  animadversions."  Evelyn 
was  secretary  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  the  contemporary  of 
Halley  and  Newton.  Again  in  our  own  day,  when  the  con- 
versation turns  on  psychical  phenomena,  on  phantasms  of  the 
dying,  for  instance,  which  way  does  the  evidence  turn  the 
scale  of  belief — or  does  it  still  swing  ?  Thirty  years  ago  it 
might  not  have  been  swinging. ^  Is  a  man  ironical,  flippant, 
or  Milesian  when  it  is  clear  that,  though  intensely  interested 
in  a  matter,  he  cannot  make  up  his  mind  and  that  he  cannot 
keep  off  the  subject — even  if  at  times  to  another  man,  who  is 
not  interested  in  the  question,  for  whom  it  is  settled  and 
done  with,  his  language  seems  susceptible  of  an  ironical  inter- 
pretation ?  "  It  was  all  being  done  by  the  god,  that  the  Persian 
navy  might  be  equalized  with  the  Greek  one  and  not  be  many 
times  larger,"  2  says  Herodotus,  when  a  second  storm  does 
still  further  damage  to  the  Persians.  Some  people  are  a  great 
deal  too  clever  to  understand  simple  and  straightforward 
minds.  It  is  part  of  Herodotus'  greatness  that  he  can  be 
inconsistent,  that  he  can  see  both  sides  of  a  matter  and  see 
them  too  well  to  decide  quickly.  Herodotus  is  ready  to  re- 
concile the  two  possibilities  as  to  the  cause  of  the  Peneios 
gully — to  discuss  the  origins  of  Herakles,  god  or  hero,  or 
perhaps  both,  one  of  each ;  he  is  open  to  criticize  myth  or 
Orphic  theology,  to  listen  to  everything  philosophers  and 
others  of  more  flippant  habit  may  have  to  say,  as  he  is  to  be 
initiated  into  mysteries  ;  but  when  all  is  said  and  done,  there 
are  gods,  and  they  do  influence  men's  lives,  and  they  do  reveal 
their  will  and  sometimes  the  future.      Theory  here  or  theory 

1  Mr.  William  de  Morgan's  phrase  hits  off  exactly  -'  the  stage  of 
provisional  receptivity  we  now  live  in  "  [Alice-for-Short,  ch.  xlvi.). 

"  No  criticism  of  this  passage  could  be  less  intelligent  than  that  of 
Dr.  Macan,  ad  loc. 


24  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

there,  there  are  the  facts  of  history  and  of  Hfe,  perplexing 
enough  to  justify  or  even  to  explain — but  facts  they  are,  as 
far  as  he  can  see,  or  his  friend  Sophocles  either,  and  to  facts 
it  is  wiser  to  stick.  "  Against  oracles  I  cannot  make  objec- 
tions that  they  are  not  true,  for  I  do  not  desire  to  try  to  over- 
throw them  when  they  speak  clearly,"  and  he  gives  an  instance, 
and  continues :  "  looking  to  such  things  as  this,  and  when 
Bakis  speaks  so  clearly,  I  do  not  venture  myself  to  make  any 
objections  about  oracles,  nor  can  I  admit  them  from  others  " 
(viii.  ^^y 

Whatever  the  order  in  which  Herodotus  wrote  his  books, 
whether  he  began  with  Xerxes  and  afterwards  added  Egjrpt,  or 
wrote  straight  ahead,  it  is  clear  that  he  kept  his  work  by  him 
till  it  was  done,  and  it  is  humanly  probable  that  he  read  over 
what  he  had  written — and  he  published  it.  The  speculations 
which  Egypt  wakes  in  his  mind  are  speculations — and  facts 
are  facts.  The  three  books  about  Xerxes  are  full  of  the  divine. 
A  later  age  might  read  the  story  otherwise.  The  Corinthian 
in  Thucydides  may  see  facts,  thanks  to  Herodotus,  but  judge 
them  differently — "  the  Mede  came  from  the  ends  of  the  earth 
to  the  Peloponnese  before  the  Spartans  were  quite  ready  to 
meet  him  .  .  .  and  chiefly  tripped  over  his  own  feet."  ^  But 
the  last  three  books  of  Herodotus  are  pervaded  by  the  sense  of 
Providence  being  at  work  in  the  deliverance  of  Greece,  open- 
eyed  as  he  is  for  Greek  bravery  and  cunning — Providence,  that 
governs  the  brute  world  too,  for  its  preservation,  giving  the 
hare  many  children  and  the  lioness  one  only  (iii.  io8).  Neither 
gods  nor  Providence  are  shaken  by  a  fair  study  of  facts,  even  if 
the  facts  raise  questions  ;  and  facts  and  questions  in  plenty 
Egypt  had  for  Herodotus. 

To  begin,  then,  Egypt  opened  up  for  the  Greeks  a  vista  of 
the  immense  antiquity  of  the  earth  and  of  man,  not  unlike  that 
which  Geology  revealed  in  the  nineteenth  century.  The  sug- 
gestion came  in  two  ways.    The  Nile  makes  Egypt,  as  Hero- 

1  Grundy  [Persian  War,  p.  232)  suggests  that  Herodotus  probably- 
had  revised  versions  of  oracles  given  him  at  Delphi.  The  revision 
would,  of  course,  greatly  help  belief  in  one  not  aware  that  the  oracles 
had  been  revised.  See  also  the  remark  of  Grundy  on  the  oracle  in 
the  tale  of  Thermopylae,  p.  307 — which  seems  just,  and,  if  just,  it  really 
disposes  of  Professor  Bury's  5-  graceful  genuflexion." 

*  Thuc.  i.  69. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD      25 

dotus  saw  ;  and  he  conjectured  that  what  is  now  Egypt  might 
once  have  been  a  long  narrow  gulf,  not  unlike  the  Red  Sea,  but 
reaching  northward  to  the  Mediterranean,  and  might  in  ten  or 
twenty  thousand  years  have  been  filled  by  a  river  "  so  great  and 
so  busy  "  as  the  Nile.  Geological  indications  lead  him  to  hold 
that  it  was  so — shells  on  the  hills,  salt  on  the  surface  of  the 
land  here  and  there,  and  above  all  the  black  and  crumbling  soil 
which  "is  in  truth  the  mud  and  silt  brought  down  from 
Ethiopia  by  the  river  "  (ii.  11, 12).^  The  observation  is  sound, 
and  the  speculation  implies  some  freedom  of  mind  in  dealing 
with  great  tracts  of  time.  But  Geology  is  one  thing  and  History 
another. 

"  Formerly,"  says  Herodotus,  "  when  Hecataios  the  logo- 
poios  was  at  Thebes  and  told  his  own  pedigree,  and  connected 
his  own  family  with  a  god  in  the  sixteenth  generation,  the  priests 
of  Zeus  did  for  him  much  the  same  as  they  did  for  me,  though  I 
told  them  no  pedigree  of  mine."  (The  addition  is  delightful.) 
Each  historian  in  his  day  was  taken  into  the  temple,  "  which  is 
of  great  size,"  and  there  he  was  shown  a  number  of  colossal 
wooden  statues,  each  the  likeness  of  a  priest  set  up  by  himself, 
when  in  his  turn  he  succeeded  his  father— each  therefore 
representing  a  generation.  "  And  when  Hecataios  had  told  his 
pedigree  and  connected  his  family  with  a  god  in  the  sixteenth 
generation,  they  counted  up  the  statues  and  anti-pedigreed 
against  him,  not  receiving  his  story  that  a  man  v^^as  bom  of  a 
god  ;  and  they  anti-pedigreed  thus,  saying  that  each  colossus 
was  a  piromis,  son  of  a  piromis,  until  they  showed  him  five  and 
forty  and  three  hundred  colossi ;  and  neither  with  god  nor  with 
hero  did  they  connect  them.  Piromis  is  in  the  Greek  tongue 
a  kalos  kdgathos  "  (ii.  143).^  There  is  irony  in  this  passage, 
but  it  is  directed  against  Hecataios  and  |not  his  sixteenth 
ancestor. 

Herodotus  gives  it  as  his  opinion  that  Hesiod  and  Homer 
lived  four  hundred  years  before  him  and  not  more  ;  "  and  these 
are  they  who  made  a  theogony  for  the  Greeks,  and  gave  the 
gods  their  titles,  and  distributed  to  them  honours  and  arts, 
and  set  forth  their  forms  "  (ii.  53) .    Four  hundred  years  is  a  much 

^  See  notes  of  How  and  Wells,  ad  loc. 

"  This  phrase  is  so  hard  to  translate  that  I  leave  it,  and  refer  the 
reader  to  the  treatment  of  it  at  the  beginning  of  Chapter  VI. 


26  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

shorter  time  than  three  hundred  and  forty-five  generations. 
Elsewhere  he  tells  us  that  "  the  names  of  nearly  all  the  gods 
have  come  from  Egypt  to  Greece,"  and  adds  :  "  that  they  come 
from  the  barbarians,  I  find  on  inquiry  to  be  the  fact,  and  I  think 
they  mostly  came  from  Egypt  "  ;  and  we  can  see  how  he  reached 
his  view.  Certain  Egyptian  gods  were  identified  with  certain 
Greek  gods  in  accordance  with  the  habit  of  men  all  over  the 
ancient  world  who  found  their  own  gods  in  those  of  most  peoples 
they  met,  renamed  but  identifiable.  But  in  Egypt  Herodotus 
was  told  that  the  natives  had  had  the  actual  names  of  the 
Greek  gods  in  their  country  for  all  time  (though  not  of  all  the 
gods)  ;  since  they  were  the  first  to  use  the  names  of  the  twelve 
gods  (ii.  4).  Since  Egyptian  religion,  then,  is  so  much  older 
than  Greek,  Greece  must  be  the  borrower.  Poseidon  has  another 
origin,  for  "  no  people,  except  the  Libyans,  has  had  the  name  of 
Poseidon  from  the  first  "  ;  and  certain  other  gods'  names  were 
learnt  from  the  Pelasgians.  This  line  of  speculation  was  con- 
firmed by  the  priestesses  of  Dodona.  Herodotus  tells  us  how  he 
learnt  that  originally  the  Pelasgians  worshipped  gods  without 
names,  "  calling  them  gods  {deoixi)  as  having  set  all  things  in 
order  {6€VTa<i),"  and  that  then  they  learnt  the  names  from 
Egypt,  and  in  some  uncertainty  asked  the  oracle  at  Dodona 
whether  they  should  use  them,  and  the  oracle  bade  do  so.  Thus 
late  in  time  did  Greece  learn  to  call  her  gods  by  name.  How 
the  names  came  at  last,  he  sets  forth  in  the  tale  of  the  black 
doves  that  spoke  with  human  voices — a  poetic  way,  he  suggests, 
of  saying  that  the  dark-skinned  Egyptian  priestesses  spoke  a 
barbarian  tongue.^ 

Not  only  the  names  of  the  gods  he  attributes  to  Egypt,  but 
the  images  and  the  solemn  assemblies,  the  processions  and 
approaches  to  temples,  for  these  have  been  in  Egypt  from  a 
very  ancient  time,  while  the  Greeks  only  introduced  them 
lately  (ii.  4,  58).  One  sacred  custom  he  traces  to  another  source 
— "  I  think  that  in  these  regions  [Libya]  first  arose  the  practice 
of  crying  aloud  during  the  performance  of  sacred  rites,  for  the 
Libyan  women  do  this  well  "  (iv.  187).  One  can  imagine  him 
listening  to  the  noise — tolerable  because  it  was  associated  with 
religious  emotion  and  archaeological  discovery. 

Two  or  three  generations  had  passed  since  Xenophanes  of 
^  See  Herodotus,  ii.  50-57. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD     27 

Colophon  had  told  the  Greeks  that  Hesiod  and  Homer  attri- 
buted to  the  gods  all  that  was  shame  and  blame  among  man- 
kind, and  had  added  the  ironical  suggestion  that,  if  cows  and 
horses  could  carve  gods,  those  gods  would  not  be  anthropo- 
morphic. Aeschylus,  whom  Herodotus  read^  and  used  and 
quoted  by  name,  taught  that  the  popular  idea  of  divine  envy  is 
not  true  enough — divine  judgments  are  just  and  inexorable ; 
not  God's  envy,  but  man's  overweening  is  their  cause.  But 
Herodotus,  to  whom  they  would  attribute  Milesian  irreverence, 
keeps  to  the  old  paths.  "  The  deity  {to  Oelov),"  says  Solon  in 
his  story,  "  is  altogether  envious  and  apt  to  disturb  our  lot  " 
(i.  32).  "  To  me,"  says  King  Amasis  to  Polycrates,  "  thy  great 
good  fortune  is  not  pleasing,  since  I  know  that  the  deity  [ro  Oelov) 
is  envious"  (iii.  40).  "God,"  says  Artabanus,  "is  wont  to 
cut  down  all  that  exceeds  .  .  .  for  he  allows  none  to  think 
great  things  save  himself  "  (vii.  10).  Xerxes  is  for  Aeschylus 
a  warning  to  men  against  the  blindness  of  overweening  ;  in 
Herodotus'  story  he  is  driven  into  the  folly  of  his  great  expedi- 
tion by  divine  compulsion  that  he  may  be  brought  low.  So 
near  does  he  keep  to  popular  thinking,  or  popular  fear  ;  slowly 
do  the  great  ideas  penetrate  a  people, 

A  curious  hint  almost  of  antipathy  comes  out  when  he  is 
ending  the  splendid  but  improbable  tale  of  Rhampsinitus. 
The  king,  they  told  him  in  Egypt,  went  down  alive  to  that 
place  which  the  Greeks  call  Hades,  and  there  he  diced  with 
Demeter  and  came  back  with  a  gift  from  her.  Certain  usages 
of  his  own  day  were  supposed  to  commemorate  this — "  but 
whether  it  is  from  this  cause  that  they  keep  the  feast  or  for 
some  other,  I  cannot  say."  And  then,  in  the  next  chapter,  he 
makes  an  apologia,  and  adds  a  most  striking  fact  (which  modern 
scholars  hold  to  be  in  part  wrong),  and  concludes  with  a  dark 
touch  at  certain  people. 

"  Now  as  to  the  tales  told  by  the  Egyptians  let  him  accept 
them  to  whom  they  are  credible.  As  for  me;  it  is  to  be  imder- 
stood  throughout  the  whole  of  the  history  that  I  write  what  I 
hear  said  by  the  people  in  each  place.  The  Egyptians  say  that 
Demeter  and  Dionysos  are  rulers  of  the  world  below.  And  the 
Egyptians  are  also  the  first  who  spake  this  word  that  the  soul 

^  Herodotus  did  a  good  deal  of  reading — especially  poets.  See  vi. 
52.     Cf.  iv.  36,  his  study  of  geography  and  maps. 


28  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  man  is  immortal,  and  that,  when  the  body  dies,  the  soul  ever 
enters  into  another  creature  that  chances  then  to  be  coming  to 
birth  ;  and  when  it  has  gone  the  round  of  all  the  creatures  of 
land  and  sea  and  air,  it  enters  again  into  a  man's  body  then 
coming  to  birth ;  and  its  circuit  takes  three  thousand  years. 
This  word  certain  Greeks  made  use  of,  some  earlier,  some  later, 
as  if  it  were  their  own  ;  the  names  of  these  men  I  know,  but  I  do 
not  write  them  "  (ii.  123). 

Now  the  god  Dionysos  and  his  name  came  to  Greece  long 
after  the  other  gods  (ii.  52) ;  and  the  coincidence  between  his 
rites  in  Egypt  and  in  Greece  is  not  accidental ;  the  rites  are 
not  like  other  Greek  rites,  "  nor  certainly  shall  I  say  that  the 
Egj^ptians  took  from  the  Greeks  either  this  or  any  other  custom," 
says  Herodotus.  He  adds  his  belief  that  Melampus  who  intro- 
duced Dionysiac  rites  to  Greece  must  have  learnt  them  from 
Cadmus  of  Tyre,  and  so  they  came  from  Egypt  (ii.  49).  For 
in  Egypt  "  the  customs  of  their  fathers  they  use,  and  they  add 
no  other  thereto  "  (ii.  79).  Accordingly  when  rite  and  god  and 
linen  garb  coincide,  and  the  Egyptians  are  in  agreement  with 
the  observances  "  called  Orphic  and  Bacchic,  but  really 
Egyptian,  and  with  the  Pythagoreans "  (ii.  81),  it  is  clear 
which  borrowed  from  the  other. 

The  Egyptians  indeed  taught  the  immortality  of  the  soul ; 
but  as  to  its  transmigration  scholars  are  not  agreed.  Professor 
Burnet  says  categorically  they  did  not ;  ^  Professor  Erman 
says  we  cannot  judge  whether  Herodotus  was  rightly  informed.^ 
Herodotus,  Professor  Burnet  says,  does  not  refuse  to  give  names 
except  in  the  case  of  contemporaries  ;  so,  as  Pythagoras  was 
dead,  he  accepts  Stein's  suggestion  that  Empedocles  is  meant, 
whom  Herodotus  might  have  met  at  Thurii.  Southern  Italy, 
as  the  Orphic  gold  tablets  may  remind  us,  was  fuU  of  Orphic 
teaching.  Whoever  is  meant,  the  phrase  used  implies  dis- 
favour ;  there  is  detachment  in  this  reference  to  the  Orphics — 
the  first  allusion  to  them  in  literature. 

First  and  last  Herodotus  attributes  so  much  of  Greek 
religion  to  Egyptian  influence  as  to  rouse  still  more  the  indigna- 
tion of  Plutarch,  who  remarks  that,  while  he  witnesses  to  the 

^  Burnet,  Early  Greek  Philosophy ,  95  n.  Cf.  Gomperz,  Greek 
Thinkers,  i.  126. 

2  Erman,  Egyptian  Religion,  191. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD      29 

great  piety  and  justice  of  the  Egyptians,  he  acquits  Busiris  of 
human  sacrifice  and  the  slaying  of  guests,  and  attaches  these  sins 
to  Menelaus — a  Greek,  of  course  ;  "  such  a  lover  of  barbarians 
is  he."  1  It  is  possible  to  sympathize  with  Plutarch's  wrath, 
for  scholarship  has  other  canons  than  those  used  by  Herodotus 
to  explain  similarity  of  custom  and  belief,  and  the  indebtedness 
of  Greece  to  Egypt  in  this  field  is  given  up  nowadays.  But 
for  our  present  purposes  it  does  not  so  much  matter  that 
Herodotus  was  perhaps  wrong  in  his  conclusions  as  that  he 
thought  deeply  over  certain  questions,  and  that  he  gave  his 
mind  at  once  to  the  quest  for  evidence  upon  them,  and  to  the 
study  of  such  evidence  as  he  found — and  this  in  so  frank  and 
whole-hearted  a  way.  It  is  also  particularly  interesting  that, 
after  initiation  in  several  varieties  of  Mysteries,  he  cares  so 
little  for  Orphism.  Euripides  disliked  the  Orphics  ;  Plato 
borrowed  from  them,  and  detested  them — the  one  counting 
their  rites  quackery,  the  other  indignant  at  the  strong  emphasis 
they  laid  on  the  wrong  features  of  religion.  The  reasons  of 
Herodotus  are  not  so  clearly  given — unless  it  is  that  a  strong, 
simple,  truth-loving  nature  revolts  at  a  divine  revelation 
which  turns  out  to  be  a  mere  plagiarism  from  Egypt.  The 
soul  may  indeed  be  immortal ;  but  a  religious  confraternity 
that  trades  in  this  immortality,  as  if  the  teaching  were  their 
own — "  the  names  of  these  men  I  know,  but  I  do  not  write 
them." 

Herodotus  is  not  in  the  least  ashamed  of  the  fact  that 
Greece  has  borrowed  her  arts  from  the  barbarians.  It  was 
Cadmus  and  his  Phoenicians  who  brought  letters  to  the  Greeks 
among  "  many  arts,"  as  old  inscriptions  testify  which  Herodotus 
saw  at  Thebes  in  Boeotia.  Only,  as  so  often  happened,  the 
Greeks  "  having  received  letters  by  instruction  of  the 
Phoenicians,  changed  their  form  slightly  and  so  made  use  of 
them  "  (v.  58-60).  Whether  we  owe  more  to  Cadmus  and  his 
friends  for  the  consonants  or  to  their  Greek  neighbours  and 
successors  for  the  vowels,  only  those  perhaps  who  have  tried  to 
learn  Semitic  languages  are  quite  qualified  to  say.  The  art  of 
geometry,  Herodotus  says,  was  derived  from  Egyptian  experi- 
ments in  land  measurement  for  purposes  of  taxation,  "  and 
afterwards  came  into  Hellas  also."  (Plutarch  attributed  the 
*  De  Herodoti  malignitate,  12,  13,  p.  Ss/a-d. 


30  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

stimulus  to  geometry  to  an  ingenious  command  given  by 
Apollo.^)  "As  touching  the  sun-dial  and  the  gnomon,"  Hero- 
dotus continues,  "  and  the  twelve  divisions  of  the  day,  they  were 
learnt  by  the  Hellenes  from  the  Babylonians"  (ii.  109).  Pro- 
fessor Sayce  will  not  allow  this  about  geometry — "  only  a  Greek 
guide  could  have  invented  this  story  " — but  he  concedes  the 
twelve  hours  to  the  Babylonians — "  this  is  perfectly  correct." 
It  would  be  hard  to  deny  it  as  long  as  every  hour  has  sixty 
minutes.  But  the  Greeks  might  even  now  go  further  and 
borrow  still  more,  Herodotus  holds — "  As  to  human  matters, 
the  priests  agreed  with  one  another  in  saying  that  the  Egyptians 
were  the  first  of  all  men  on  earth  to  find  out  the  course  of  the 
year,  and  to  divide  the  seasons  into  twelve  parts  to  make  up 
the  whole  ;  and  this  they  said  they  found  out  from  the  stars. 
And  they  reckon  this  so  much  more  wisely  than  the  Greeks  in 
my  thinking,  in  that  the  Greeks  every  other  year  throw  in  an 
intercalated  month  to  bring  the  seasons  right,  but  the  Egyptians 
reckon  the  twelve  months  at  thirty  days  each,  and  bring 
in,  every  year,  five  days  outside  the  number,  and  thus  the 
circle  of  their  seasons  comes  round  to  the  same  point  in  its 
course"  (ii.  4).^  What  Greece  owes  to  the  Carians,  we  have 
seen. 

In  short  Herodotus  sees  that  every  race  has,  as  we  put  it 
to-day,  its  contribution.  His  language  is  simpler,  and  till  we 
grasp  the  strong,  clear  wisdom  that  underlies  it  we  shall  under- 
value him.  "  Every  way  then,"  he  says,  "it  is  plain  to  me 
that  Cambyses  was  mad  exceedingly ;  for  he  would  not  have 
taken  in  hand  to  deride  sacred  usages  and  customs.  For  if  one 
were  to  set  before  all  men  a  choice  and  bid  them  pick  out 
the  best  customs  (vo/juovq)  from  among  all  customs,  each  race 
after  examination  would  choose  their  own  ;  so  much  the  best 
do  all  count  their  own  customs.  So  that  it  is  not  likely  that 
any  but  a  madman  would  make  laughter  of  such  things  "  (iii.  38) . 
He  fortifies  his  conclusion  with  the  tale  of  how  King  Darius 
contrasted  the  usage  of   Greek  and   Indian  in  the  disposal 

^  To  double  the  size  of  the  temple. 

2  Cf.  Solon's  reckoning  of  the  days  of  a  man's  life,  complicated  by 
thirty-five  intercalary  months  in  seventy  years,  i.  32.  See  the  inter- 
esting note  of  How  and  Wells  on  ii.  4 — on  calendars.  See  also  Chapter 
VII.  p.  223. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD   31 

of  the  dead,  and  ends,  "  I  think  Pindar  was  right  when  he 
said  in  his  poetry  that  Custom  is  king  of  all "  {v6/u,ov  TrdvTwv 

The  world  is  so  wide  and  so  various,  so  full  of  wonder,  that 
there  is  room  for  all  men  to  learn  something  of  it  for  themselves 
and  to  tell  it  to  others.  There  are  the  strange  regions  that 
lie  outside  the  map,  and  some  people  finish  their  maps  off  too 
quickly  and  too  ingeniously.  It  is  curious,  for  instance,  that  about 
the  Hj^erboreans,  the  people  at  the  back  of  the  North  Wind, 
more  is  known  on  the  island  of  Delos  than  an5rwhere  else — the 
Scythians,  who  ought  to  know  of  them,  do  not.  "  If,  however, 
there  are  any  Hyperboreans,  it  follows  that  there  are  others 
who  are  Hypernotians.^  But  I  laugh  when  I  see  that  many 
have  drawn  maps  (TreptoSov?)  of  the  world  already,  and  not 
one  of  them  has  set  it  forth  in  a  sensible  way  ^ — seeing  they 
draw  Oceanus  flowing  round  the  earth,  which  they  make  as 
round  as  if  they  had  used  compasses  [or  a  lathe,  w?  airo  ropvov] , 
and  make  Asia  and  Europe  equal  in  size  "  (iv.  36).  Things  are 
not  as  neat  as  that,  and  rumour  reaches  far  into  the  unknown. 
There  is  the  tale  (iv.  42)  of  the  circumnavigation  of  Africa  by 
Phoenicians,  from  the  Red  Sea  southward,  and  the  thing  "  which 
I  cannot  believe,  but  another  may,  that  in  sailing  round  Libya 
they  had  the  sun  on  their  right  hand."  He  cannot  believe 
that ;  but  he  does  believe  that  the  sun  is  hottest  for  the  Indians 
at  dawn,  and  not,  as  for  other  men,  at  midday  (iii.  104).  He 
fetches  the  Danube  from  the  Celts  and  the  Pyrenees — "  the 
city  of  Pyrene  " — to  the  Black  Sea,  "cutting  Europe  across 
the  middle,"  to  the  exclusion  of  the  Rhone,  of  which  we  should 
have  expected  him  to  have  heard  more — from  some  Massilian  or 
almost  any  trader  with  Marseilles  (ii.  33).  Polar  nights  he 
has  heard  of,  but  not  in  a  convincing  way — "  that  beyond  these 
are  other  men  who  sleep  for  six  months — that  I  do  not  accept 
at  all "  (iv.  36) — "  nor  do  I  know  of  islands,  called  Cassiterides, 
really  existing,  from  which  the  tin  comes  to  us,"  nor  of  a  river 

*  Pindar,  Frag.  149  ;  quoted  also  by  Plato,  Govg.  484B,  with  more 
context.  Herodotus  gives  the  phrase  another  sense  than  that  intended 
by  the  poet — "  nearly  the  reverse,"  says  W.  H.  Thompson. 

*  An  argument  oddly  linked  to  a  protest  against  a  too  symmetrical 
map;  Eratosthenes  called  it  absurd,  there  might  quite  well  chance  to 
be  Hypernotians  (Strabo,  61,  62). 

'  We  may  note  how  this  implies  a  study  of  books  and  maps. 


32  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Eridanos,  though  tin  and  amber  do  come  from  the  end  of 
Europe  (iii.  115).  "  As  for  him  who  talked  about  Oceanus,  he 
carried  his  tale  into  the  unknown,  and  needs  not  refutation  ; 
for  I  for  my  part  know  of  no  river  Oceanus  existing,  but  I  think 
Homer  or  one  of  the  poets  before  him  invented  the  word  and 
brought  it  into  poetry  "  (ii.  23).  After  all  this,  we  are  re- 
minded of  gold-digging  ants  (iii.  102)  and  one-eyed  Arimaspians 
(iii.  116)  and  many  things  improbable  to  us,  but  accepted  by 
our  historian.^ 

1  So  he  goes,  wavering  as  every  explorer  must  who  has 
once  crossed  the  line  of  the  familiar  and  lived  among  the 
marvels  of  the  unknown  world.  He  loses  the  common  canons 
of  knowledge  and  probability  that  every  common  man  in  the 
streets  of  Halicarnassus  can  use,  who  is  clever  enough  not  to 
believe  what  surprises  him.  But  there  is  a  folly  which  does  not 
believe  what  it  is  told.  Even  the  floundering  of  Herodotus  in 
and  out  of  probability  and  impossibility,  hearsay  and  sight  of 
the  eyes,  speaks  to  his  being  no  common  man.  He  has  grasped 
the  wonder  of  the  world — and  his  discovery  is  one  of  his  great 
gifts  to  Greece  and  to  mankind. 

Much  is  there  passing  strange, 

Nothing  surpassing  mankind. 
He  it  is  loves  to  range 
Over  the  Ocean  hoar 
Thorough  the  surges'  roar, 

South  winds  raging  behind. 

So  sang  his  friend  Sophocles,  and  none  believed  more  heartily 
than  Herodotus  that  there  is  naught  more  wonderful  than 
man,  with  his  victories  over  sea  and  earth  and  sky,  the  marvels 
of  all  the  ends  of  the  earth  made  his,  the  sea  his  bond  of  union 
with  all  men,  and  the  very  stars  linked  to  the  plough  of  the 
farmer  and  the  helm  of  the  steersman.  "  And  speech  and 
windswift  thought  and  all  the  moods  that  mould  a  state  hath 

1  At  the  same  time,  it  is  remarked  that  he  is  less  credulous  than 
Ctesias,  and  I  am  told  that  gold-digging  ants  are  mentioned  in  Sanslcrit 
literature — not  that  this  proves  them  to  exist,  but  it  points  to  a  wide- 
spread myth  at  all  events,  and  some  contact  of  Herodotus  with  people 
directly  or  indirectly  in  touch  with  Indian  story.  See  H.  G.  Rawlinson, 
Intercourse  between  India  and  the  Western  World  from  the  Earliest 
Times  to  the  Fall  of  Rome,  who  notes  the  soundness  of  some  of  the 
historian's  information. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD     33 

he  taught  himself."     And  no  phase  of  it  all  is  alien  to  the 
interest  of  the  great  traveller. 

So  far  hardly  a  word  has  been  given  to  the  great  history, 
so  much  we  have  found  to  absorb  us  in  its  writer.  All  we 
have  dealt  with  so  far,  and  much  more,  comes  incidentally  in 
the  narrative  of  the  Persian  wars  with  the  Greeks — "  for  my 
tale  sought  digressions  from  the  beginning  of  it,"  he  says 
(iv.  30).  Such  a  principle  might  make  any  book  diffuse, 
but  the  art  of  Herodotus  is  seen  in  the  way  in  which  his  tale 
carries  all  its  digressions,  all  its  weight  of  learning  and  wonder, 
the  lore  and  legend  of  all  mankind,  and  never  loses  sight  of  its 
goal.  Each  digression  brings  us  nearer  to  that.  And  as  we 
work  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  story,  and  hear  less  of 
Egyptians  and  Libyans  in  the  plural,  and  more  of  this  man  and 
that  man,  we  wonder  more  at  the  simple  skill  of  the  story- 
teller— "  most  Homeric  of  them  all,"  asLonginus  said  long  ago.* 
No  one  overshadows  or  warps  the  tale  of  the  Great  Persian 
War,  but  as  Aristotle  said  of  Homer,  "with  the  minimum  of 
prelude,"  Herodotus  "  at  once  brings  in  a  man  or  woman  or  other 
being,  none  characterless,  each  with  a  character  of  its  own."^ 

One  instance  may  suffice,  and  we  will  not  take  any  of  the 
great  outstanding  figures  of  the  story — the  wise  Solon,  or  the 
cunning  Themistocles,  or  any  of  the  gallant  Persians — but 
rather  a  figure  from  the  background,  whose  history  is  suggested 
rather  than  told.  Of  the  reign  of  Pisistratus  we  read  in  the 
First  Book  ;  and  in  the  Fifth  we  read  how  his  sons  were  expelled 
— Thucydides  found  something  to  correct  here — and  how  Athens 
grew  great  in  freedom  we  have  seen.^  And  the  Spartans 
saw  it,  too,  and  with  regret ;  and  they  were  confirmed  in  their 
regret  by  a  strange  discovery,  made  since  they  expelled  the 
Pisistratids.  For  "  Cleomenes  had  obtained  from  the  Acro- 
polis those  oracles  which  the  sons  of  Pisistratus  possessed 
before,  and  had  left  in  the  temple  when  they  were  driven  out " 
(v.  90) ;  we  remember  they  had  to  go  quickly.  In  these 
oracles  the  Spartans  learnt  that  they  were  destined  to  suffer 
many  injuries  from  the  Athenians ;  so  to  reduce  the  strength 
of  Athens  they  resolved  to  restore  Hippias,  and  sent  for  him 
from  Sigeum,  where  his  family  lived  in  exile,  though  in  a  town 
of  their  own.     But  when  their  allies  gathered,  the  Corinthians 

1  Longinus,  13,  3.  a  Poetics,  24,  7,  ^  v.  78. 

3 


34  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

told  the  story  of  Cypselos,  to  dissuade  the  restoration.  "  And 
Hippias  made  answer,  calling  to  witness  the  same  gods,  that 
assuredly  the  Corinthians  most  of  all  men  would  long  for 
the  Pisistratids,  when  the  days  come  when,  it  is  fated,  they 
shall  be  troubled  by  the  Athenians.  Thus  Hippias  made 
answer,  as  he  that  most  exactly  of  all  men  knew  the  oracles  " 
(v.  93).  He  spoke  in  vain.  But  after  twenty  years  of  exile 
he  came  again  to  Attica,  an  old  man,  when  the  Persian  expedi- 
tion reached  Marathon,^  and  once  more  he  had  to  go  away. 
And  then  he — or  his — went  to  Xerxes,  and  with  them  an 
old  enemy,  now  reconciled,  Onomacritos,  whom  Hipparchos 
had  driven  from  Athens,  when  Lasos,  the  poet,  of  Hermione, 
"  caught  him  interpolating  an  oracle  in  the  works  of  Musaeus  " 
(vii.  6).     What  do  these  references  to  oracles  mean  ? 

Herodotus,  as  we  have  seen,  believed  in  oracles,  though 
some  might  be  forged  or  false  ;  ^  but  here  was  the  man  who 
knew  the  oracles  best  and  most  surely  of  all  men.  Why  ? 
Look  at  his  story.  An  old  man  in  the  year  of  Marathon, 
490,  he  must  have  been  a  child  in  those  brilliant  days  when  his 
great  genial  father  was  tyrant  and  exile  by  turns,  when  the 
men  of  Athens  were  glad  to  get  him  out  and  then  content  to 
have  him  back.  Pisistratus  was  a  man — a  large-hearted, 
big-natured  man  ;  if  he  was  a  tyrant,  he  was  a  tyrant  with 
good-humour  and  friendly  ways,  who  certainly  would  face 
the  ups  and  downs  of  life  with  gaiety  and  spirit.  But  life 
was  another  thing  for  the  t3n:ant's  child — the  sudden  alarm 
in  the  night,  the  hushed  flight  through  the  darkness,  the  terror 
of  sudden  death  by  Athenian  hands  before  dawn,  the  side-track 
down  to  the  beach,  the  ship  and  its  muffled  oars,  pursued  still 
by  the  dread  of  capture — and  then  the  restless  years  of  exile — 
enlivened  for  the  father  by  Thracian  adventures  among  semi- 
savages  and  gold  mines,  and  filled  with  haimting  memories 
for  the  child,  the  women's  tales  of  the  night  of  fear  told  again 
and  again,  till  every  night  was  liable  to  be  one  of  fear.  Then 
the  return — and  Megacles'  daughter — and  the  second  exile  ; 
again  a  return,  with  mercenary  troops  this  time.^    And  then 

*  Herodotus,  vi.  107,  telling  of  his  dream  ;  Thuc.  vi.  59. 
2Cf.  i.  66,  75  ;  v.  91. 

»  This  time,  Herodotus  tells  us  (i.  61),  Hippias  urged  his  father 
to  recover  his  tyranny. 


THE  TRAVELLER  IN  THE  GREEK  WORLD  35 

the  bright  old  man  died,  and  the  nervous  Hippias  with  his 
brothers  succeeded,  and  still  the  dread  of  exile  never  died.^ 
What  had  the  gods  in  store  ?  He  turned  to  the  oracles, 
gathered  them,  and  studied  them ;  none  knew  them  better, 
none  took  more  care  that  no  other  should  know  them.  For 
in  modern  China,  as  in  Chrysostom's  days,  it  is  the  experience 
of  despots  that  it  is  better  that  they  alone  should  have  early 
knowledge  of  heaven's  will — it  leads  eager  men  to  rebellion,  and 
cautious  men  to  expect  rebelUon  to  succeed — difficulty  and 
danger  both  ways  for  the  monarch.'  Then  the  rebelUon  comes, 
and  Hippias  loses  his  nerve  ;  he  tries  to  smuggle  his  children 
out,  but  they  are  caught  by  the  Athenians — and  if  he  will  not 
go,  his  children  will  be  killed.  He,  too,  is  a  man ;  he  agrees 
and  goes ;  and  in  the  hurry  he  leaves  his  hoard  of  oracles 
behind.  That  is  Herodotus'  story,  and  he  hardly  pauses  to 
tell  it ;  he  only  indicates  it,  and  the  reader  may  find  it  or 
let  it  go  as  he  may.  For,  as  Dry  den  said  of  Chaucer,  "  Here 
is  God's  plenty." 

If  the  history  of  a  war  be  one  of  strategies,  tactics,  and 
battles,  then  certain  defects  will  be  felt  in  Herodotus.  He 
sketches  his  battles  lightly — even  such  great  ones  as  Salamis  ; 
he  is  not  very  clear  about  such  things  as  the  movements  of 
the  Persian  fleet  and  army  about  Artemisium.  Often  his 
accounts  of  political  motives  and  actions  seem  defective  to  a 
modern  student  of  politics  who  compares  him  with  surprise 
with  such  experts  as  his  contemporaries  Aristophanes  and 
Thucydides.  He  troubled  very  little  about  exact  chronology, 
about  which  Thucydides  troubled  a  very  great  deal.  These 
may  seem  heavy  deductions,  and  they  would  be  in  the  case 

1  Thucydides,  however,  says  that  he  too  was  evirpoa-odos. 

*  Years  before  the  Manchu  dynasty  fell,  I  was  told  by  a  missionary 
of  prophecy-books  that  foretold  the  fall,  and  pointed  to  the  symbol  of 
the  button  on  the  of&cial  cap — like  the  seed  vessel  of  the  opium  poppy, 
and  like  it  to  be  crushed.  To  be  found  with  such  a  book  in  one's 
possession  was  death  ;  but,  said  my  friend,  many  Chinese,  when  you  get 
to  be  on  intimate  terms  with  them,  will  own  that  they  have  seen  them. 
See  W.  R.  W.  Stephens'  Life  of  St.  Chrysostom,  pp.  57,  58,  on  the  magic 
book  that  Chrysostom,  as  a  student,  fished  out  of  the  river  Orontes, 
and  the  real  danger  it  involved,  when  it  was  found  that  a  soldier  had 
seen  what  was  done.  The  book  was  put  back  into  the  river.  Cf. 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  xxix.  i,  on  the  disastrous  discovery  in  371  a.d. 
that  the  next  Emperor's  name  began  with  the  letters  eEOA. 


36  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  many  historians.  But  war  and  politics  are  more  than 
manceuvres — men  and  people  are  involved  with  all  the  varieties 
Qf  mind  and  temperament  that  individuals  and  communities 
can  show.  If  these  matter,  then  few  can  equal  Herodotus 
for  the  unsuspected  and  easy  mastery  with  which  in  one  way 
and  another  he  brings  before  us  the  world  in  which  the  great 
conflict  was  fought  out,  what  manner  of  men  took  part  on 
either  side,  what  were  their  ways  of  life,  their  preconceptions, 
and  outlooks — everything,  in  short,  that  most  matters  in  story 
or  history.  He  rambles,  he  digresses,  he  looks  as  if  he  might 
be  wasting  time — but  he  never  does.  Men,  who  have  missed 
his  method  or  lacked  the  heart  to  catch  his  bright  interest 
in  life,  may  complain  of  him,  but  let  them  try  to  name  any 
writer  who  tells  anything  like  so  much  in  such  a  compass — 
even  if  we  are  looking  for  mere  historical  material  in  the 
most  matter-of-fact  way.  But  history  is  more  than  historical 
material — it  is  life,  and  living  men  make  it  as  they  think  and 
act,  as  they  argue  astray  and  go  right  by  instinct,  as  they  love 
and  hate — sentient  creatures  not  to  be  interpreted  save  by 
the  loving  imagination  that  cares  too  much  for  them  to  wish 
to  tamper  with  the  facts,  and  feels  too  keenly  for  them  to 
be  able  to  leave  facts  dead.  All  stirs  in  Herodotus — his  web 
is  woven  of  life,  all  of  it  is  living ;  and  one  might  also  say 
it  is  all  the  life  there  was  in  his  day.  A  man's  work  may 
touch  life  in  snatches ;  this  book  touches  it  all  the  time  ;  and 
as  the  life  of  any  period  is  one  in  itself,  wide  and  deep  as 
its  roots  strike  and  spread  in  the  generations  before  it,  so 
the  work  of  Herodotus  is  one — its  roots  deep  in  the  past,  and 
still  part  of  the  glorious  whole — one  with  the  integrity  of  the 
world  it  represents.  "  Many  are  the  wondrous  things,  and  none 
more  wondrous  than  man,"  and  in  man  himself  there  are  few 
things  so  wonderful  as  the  genius  that  from  stray  impressions, 
broken  knowledge,  and  thoughts  that  are  many  and  wander 
and  come  again,  can  create  a  world  for  the  lasting  happiness 
of  mankind.     And  this  Herodotus  has  done. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES 

IN  the  history  of  the  world  and  in  the  history  of  nations 
there  are  days  that  stand  out  as  marking  beyond  all 
chance  of  error  the  passing  away  of  one  age  and  the 
beginning  of  another.  What  is  it  that  makes  the  difference  ? 
The  men  of  the  day  before  are  still  there  ;  the  forces  that 
shaped  thought  and  action  were  working  before  and  are 
working  still ;  but  the  men  are  new  men,  and  thought  works  in 
a  new  way.  A  line  has  been  crossed  in  experience  and  a  new 
consciousness  has  been  reached  ;  and  as  it  happens  with  men, 
so  it  falls  with  nations — there  is  no  return  to  the  past.  The 
new  knowledge,  the  new  realization  of  what  the  world  can  be 
and  of  what  indeed  it  is,  has  changed  everything.  The  man 
and  the  nation  wake  up  to  a  new  universe,  a  new  creation  ; 
the  old  landmarks  are  gone  ;  everything  has  to  be  thought  out 
anew,  to  be  rediscovered.  The  past  is  outworn  and  is  dis- 
carded ;  the  future — no,  the  very  present  is  all  to  learn  ;  and 
in  joy  and  in  perplexity  they  go  forward — 

Moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized. 

Such  a  new  dawn  broke  for  Greece,  when  the  day  of  Salamis 

was  over.    There  were  battles  yet  to  be  fought  with  the  Persian, 

but  they  would  be  fought  in  a  new  spirit  on  land  and  sea — in 

the  spirit  of  victory.     It  was  not  contempt  for  the  foe,  for  the 

Persian  was  a  lighting  man,  whose  courage  and  spirit  the 

historian  says  were  a  match  for  the  Spartans  themselves.^    But 

the  knowledge,  the  conviction,  that  they  were  to  outfight  such- 

an  enemy  was  part  of  the  new  outlook  of  Greece.     And  when 

the  Persian  was  finally  driven  back,  there  was  a  new  world  to 

organize  and  to  rule.     The  islands  and  the  cities  of  Asia  were 

free,  but  far  away  in  Asia  lay  the  strength  of  the  great  antagonist 

^  Herodotus,  ix.  62. 
37 


38  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

yet  unbroken,  and  he  might  return.  The  bright  variety  of  the 
old  Greek  days  of  the  sixth  century  before  Christ  was  gone ;  ^ 
it  was  clear  that,  if  the  Persian  was  not  to  come  again,  some 
barrier  must  be  set  up  to  keep  him  back.  The  old  happy-go- 
lucky  sovereignties  and  independencies  of  city  t3n:ants  and 
island  republics  had  meant  the  steady  progress  of  Persian 
power ;  the  new  age  must  strike  out  some  new  method  of 
giving  effect  to  what  in  the  hour  of  danger  all  men  had  felt — 
the  unity  of  Greece  ;  "  there  is  the  bond  of  Hellenic  race,  one 
blood,  one  tongue,  the  common  temples  of  the  gods,  the  common 
sacrifices,  the  manners  of  life  which  are  the  same  for  all."  ^ 
The  new  era  must  give  some  new  expression  to  this  new  and 
intenser  realization  of  old  knowledge.  There  are  new  seas  to 
sail,  new  lands  to  reconnoitre,  for  it  is  one  thing  to  travel  a 
country  or  to  see  a  house  as  a  stranger  on  sufferance,  and  to 
enter  upon  them  an  heir  and  a  master.  What  changes  will 
not  sheer  mastery  of  the  sea  bring  with  it  ?  Every  thought  of 
man  and  nation  is  crossed  and  quickened  by  a  new  sense  of 
power. 

It  is  informing  to  look  for  a  moment  at  a  parallel,  when  a 
parallel  is  to  be  found.  Let  it  be  Elizabethan  England,  for 
there  at  least  a  great  literature  comes  into  being  when  a  nation 
gains  a  new  sense  of  power,  and  it  is  curious  to  see  how  close 
the  parallel  is.  The  Elizabethan,  like  the  Greek,  looked  out  on 
a  world  larger  and  more  full  of  wonder  than  any  of  the  genera- 
tions before  him  could  have  guessed.  What  the  discovery  of 
America  meant  to  sentient  and  reflective  natures  can  be  read  in 
the  Faerie  Queene,  in  Montaigne's  Essays — a  new  door  thrown 
open,  through  which  the  human  mind  will  move  to  new  thoughts. 
It  is  a  new  sense  of  power  over  the  world  itself,  and  with 
it  comes  a  new  grasp  of  the  very  heavens.  Copernicus  and 
Galileo  made  a  new  heaven  for  the  new  earth  of  Columbus 
and  Cabot ;  and  what  that  meant  we  can  read  in  Milton. 
The  victory  over  the  Armada  gave  the  Englishman  the  ex- 
hilaration of  this  sense  of  power  in  the  sphere  of  the  nation. 

And  in  the  sphere  of  thought  we  meet  it  again  in  Renaissance 

( 

^  It  is  remarkable  how  many  poets  and  thinkers  and  personalities 
come  from  the  islands  in  the  old  days,  and  how  the  islands  are  all  over- 
shadowed afterwards. 

^  Herodotus,  viii.  144. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  39 

and  Reformation.  What  is  impossible,  when  God,  making  a 
new  universe,  reveals  His  plans  "  first  as  His  manner  is  to  His 
Englishmen  "  ?  So  Milton  speaks  of  it.  Power  and  the  sense 
of  power  pervade  the  whole  life  of  the  country,  and  that  life 
has  for  the  time  a  unity — an  "  integrity,"  it  has  been  called — 
that  makes  men  men  indeed — not  specialists  who  can  do  one 
thing  and  do  it  in  a  crippled  because  a  one-sided  way — but  men 
who  can  enter  into  the  whole  life  of  man — who  can  sail  a  ship, 
can  write  a  poem,  can  refute  a  Papist,  can  plant  a  new  land  and 
conquer  an  old  enemy,  live  or  die  with  that  intense  happiness, 
which  belief  in  this  glorious  universe  and  the  God  who  made  it 
alone  can  give. 

Let  us  turn  back  to  Greece  now  and  follow  out  the  parallel, 
beginning  with  the  sense  of  power  that  came  to  the  Greek  when 
lie  looked  out  on  the  physical  universe.  It  has  been  remarked 
that  the  Greek  nautical  terminology  is  native  born,  and  it 
implies  that  the  Greek  found  his  way  to  the  sea  himself,  and 
taught  himself  to  build  his  ship  and  to  sail  it.  What  an 
immense  feat  this  was,  it  is  not  easy  to  realize  in  an  age  of 
Mauretanias.  No  compass,  no  chart,  no  anchor  even — yet 
the  Greek  TOarirer  orept  '-  1  1  h  ''■'  to  jgrid  and  ^''■t  the  sea 
by  heart.  He  knew  every  country  "  in  profile  "  as  it  has  been 
called,  and  he  leamt  every  colour  and  cveiy  lippie  the  sea  can 
have  and  the  meairlng  of  them — the  shallow,  the  rock,  the 
current.  "  Wise  shipmasters,"  says  Pindar,  "  can  tell  of  a 
wind  that  shall  come  on  the  third  day,  and  are  not  wrecked 
for  love  of  gain."  ^  Such  knowledge  is  one  of  the  real  triumphs 
of  the  human  mind. 

The  Greeks  found  their  way  to  Egypt  early,  as  we  know 
from  the  Odyssey,  and  at  the  beginning  of  the  classical  period 
when  history  begins  to  have  documents,  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting of  these  is  the  inscription  at  the  great  rock-hewn  temple 
of  Abu-simbel  in  Nubia,  made  by  Greek  mercenaries  in  the 
service  of  King  Psammetichos.  The  temple  had  been  built 
by  Rameses  II  in  1330  B.C.,  and  now  between  594  and  589 
the  Greek  soldiers  cut  their  names  in  the  legs  of  the  colossi — 
one  of  them  adding  the  name  of  his  city.  Colophon. ^  About 
the  same  time  another  Ionian  found  his  way  from  Mitylene 
to  Babylon  and  served  in  the  army,  apparently,  of  King 
^  Nemeans,  7,  17.  ^  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Hist.  Inscr.,  No.  3. 


40  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Nebuchadnezzar  (605-562  B.C.).  His  name  was  Antimenidas ; 
and  when  he  came  home  in  glory,  his  brother,  the  poet  Alcaeus, 
wrote  him  an  ode  of  which  a  few  lines  survive  : 

Thou  hast  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  ; 

And  the  hilt  of  the  sword  thou  dost  hold 
Is  of  ivory  wrought,  a  thing  of  worth, 

Bound  and  studded  with  gold — 
Of  thy  prowess  the  splendid  mead — 

For  in  Babylon's  ranks  afar, 

Thou  didst  mightily  aid  in  war. 
And  didst  work  a  valiant  deed. 

Slaying  a  monstrous  man, 
And  dread  was  the  terror  he  cast — 
Five  royal  cubits  he  towered  vast 

Lacking  only  a  span.^ 

Yet  another  contemporary  lives  in  story  for  a  strange 
adventure  westward.  "  The  Carthaginians,"  we  read,  "  if  any 
sailed  past  them  for  Sardinia  or  the  Pillars,  used  to  drown  him 
in  the  sea  " — ^perhaps  ship  and  all — "  and  for  this  cause  most  of 
the  tales  of  the  West  were  not  believed."  ^  But  about  600  B.C.  a 
Samian  sea-captain,  sailing  for  Egypt,  was  blown  out  of  his 
reckoning,  "  and,  as  the  wind  did  not  cease  to  blow,  passed 
through  the  Pillars  of  Herakles  and  came  to  Tartessos  (Tarshish), 
aided  by  divine  providence."  So  Herodotus  tells  the  tale  of 
Kolaios,  and  leaves  us  to  imagine  the  sudden  gust  of  realization 
with  which  the  Samian  saw  and  knew  the  great  rocks  of  Gibraltar 
and  Jebel  Musa,  and  how  he  found  by  sheer  cunning  and  intre- 
pidity his  way  home,  coasting  along  unknown  shores,  Africa  or 
Spain,  either  passing  by  Carthage  to  Southern  Sicily,  or  risking 
all  at  Scylla  and  Charybdis.  But  home  he  reached,  and  he 
brought,  the  historian  tells  us,  more  profit  from  his  cargo  than 
any  Greek  of  whom  we  have  certain  knowledge,  save  one,  of 
whom,  alas  !   modems  know  nothing.^ 

Not  one  of  the  stories  is  an  empty  tale  of  mere  adventure. 
Each  symbolizes  the  conquest  of  the  world  by  the  Greek  mind. 
It  was  profit  in  money  that  men  sought,  and  they  found  it ; 
but,  like  Saul  seeking  his  father's  asses,  they  found  far  more 
than  they  sought,  for  in  a  sense  they  found  the  Greece  we  know, 

^  Cf.  Strabo,  c.  617  ;  the  lines  restored  by  Bergk. 
^  Strabo,  802,  citing  Eratosthenes  the  geographer. 
*  Herodotus,  iv.  152. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  41 

or  made  it.  Everywhere  they  watched  and  wondered  and 
learnt,  and  the  tales  they  brought  home  worked  like  leaven, 
and  the  Greek  mind  grew  and  expanded  to  absorb  the  whole 
world  ^ — yes,  and  the  stars  above  it,  that  brought  the  mariner 
back  to  his  island  haven. 

In  the  sphere  of  the  nation,  the  sense  of  power  that  came 
from  this  conquest  of  all  the  world  and  its  thoughts,  received  a 
new  heightening  and  a  new  value,  when  the  Persian  was  driven 
back.  The  Greeks,  when  they  gave  their  mind  to  it,  were  now 
the  first  race  on  earth. 

In  the  sphere  of  the  mind  it  was  the  same.  Philosophy, 
Plato  says,  is  the  child  of  Wob/^^v.^  As  Greece  more  and  more 
enters  into  her  inheritance  oi  the  world,  she  realizes  more  and 
more  the  mystery  of  it  all ;  and  the  great  questions  rise  of 
Whence,  and  Whither,  of  the  One  and  the  Many,  of  God  and  man, 
of  being  and  becoming.  The  history  of  Greek  philosophy  is 
not  our  present  concern,  but  let  a  few  great  names  recall  the 
great  progression.  There  is  Thales  of  Miletus,  the  first  man  of 
science  and  the  first  philosopher  of  the  Western  world  ^ — the 
first  Greek  who  foretold  an  eclipse  (28  May,  585  B.C.),*  and 
the  first  Greek,  men  said,  who  made  a  "  comer"  ^ — "  the  great- 
ness of  Thales  consisted  in  this,  that  he  was  the  first  to  ask,  not 
what  was  tne  origmal  tumff,  but  what  is  the  primary  thing  now  ; 
or  more  simply  still,  '  What  is  the  world  made  of  ?  '  The 
answer  he  gave  to  this  question  was  :  Water."  ®  There  is 
Anaximander,  who  is  credited  with  making  the  first  map,  and 
who  taught  that  behind  the  elements  is  one  eternal  indestructible 
substance,  out  of  which  everything  arises,  and  to  which  every- 
thing returns.  There  is  Heraclitus,  greater  than  any  before  him 
or  most  after  him — "  unquestionably  the  most  remarkable 
figure  among  the  Greek  philosophical  thinkers  until  we  come  to 
Socrates"  ' — "the  parts  I  understood  of  his  book,"  said  Socrates, 
"  were  splendid ;  and  I  suppose  what  I  failed  to  understand  was 
splendid  too  ;   only  it  would  need  a  Delian  diver  to  get  to  the 

^  Compare  the  interesting  phrase  of  Lucan  describing  Caesar  dis- 
cussing the  Nile  at  Cleopatra's  table — quis  dignior  autem  hoc  fuit 
auditor  mundique  capacior  hospes  ?  (x.  182,  183). 

^  Theaetetus,  15 50.  ^  Bury,  Greek  History,  p.  222. 

*  Herodotus,  i.  74.  °  Aristotle,  Pol.  1.  1 1,  p.  1259  a,  b. 

®  Burnet,  Early  Greek  Philosophy  ^,  p.  48. 

'  Adam,  The  Religious  Teachers  of  Greece,  212. 


42  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

bottom  of  it."  ^  And  there  is  Xenophanes,  traveller  and  thinker, 
who  studied  the  fossil  shells  in  the  Sicilian  hills  and  the  gods  of 
Libya,  and  traced  his  country's  decline  to  wrong  thinking. 
"  If  horses  and  cows  couia  carve  gods,"  in  what  sha^'C  would 
they  make  them  ? 

When  we  come  to  European  Greece  we  find  the  leaders  of 
thought  are  more  clearly  poets  than  philosophers,  yet  they  too 
are  touched  by  the  new  thoughts  of  the  day.  Pindar  speaks  of 
God  at  times  in  a  strain  that  suggests  monotheism — in  language 
that  fires  the  imagination  :  "  God  accomplish  eth  every  end 
whereon  he  thinketh — God  who  overtakes  the  eagle  on  the  wing 
and  passes  the  dolphin  in  the  sea,  who  bendeth  the  high- 
minded  in  his  pride,  and  to  others  he  giveth  deathless  glory."  ^ 
Of  course  he  is  no  monotheist,  but  certain  old  stories  of  the 
gods,  he  sees,  cannot  be  true  :  "  Meet  is  it  for  a  man  that  con- 
cerning gods  he  speak  what  is  noble  ;  so  the  blame  is  less.  .  .  . 
.  For  me  it  is  impossible  to  call  one  of  the  blessed  gods  cannibal ; 
I  stand  aloof ;  in  telling  ill  tales  is  oft-times  little  gain."  ^  But 
there  were  stories  in  which  he  saw  little  shame,  thinking  far 
otherwise  than  Euripides.  Plutarch  keeps  four  lines  of  his, 
where  he  speaks  of  the  soul :  *  "The  body  of  all  men  is  sub- 
ject to  all-powerful  death,  but  alive  there  yet  remains  an  image 
of  the  living  man,  for  that  alone  is  from  the  gods.  It  sleeps 
when  the  limbs  are  active,  but  to  them  that  sleep  in  many  a 
dream  it  revealeth  an  award  of  joy  or  sorrow  drawing  near." 
But  there  is  a  side  to  Pindar  that  is  alien  to  the  higher  mind  of 
Greece.  "  We  do  not  praise  the  Thebans  in  the  Persian  War," 
writes  Polybius,^  "  nor  yet  Pindar  who  in  his  poems  told 
them  to  keep  neutrality — 

The  general  weal  of  the  townsfolk  set  in  peace, 

Let  them  seek  the  gladsome  light 

Of  valour  that  glearaeth  bright 
When  the  troubles  of  the  nation  find  surcease. 

"  Large   dreamy  lines  "  ^ — what   do   they  mean  ?    what  can 
they  mean  ?     And  at  the  end  of  the  last  poem  which  we  can 

^  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  22.  ^  Pindar,  Pythian,  2,  50. 

^Pindar,  Olympian,  i,  35. 

*  Consol.  ad  Apoll.  35.     See  Adam,  Vitality  of  Platonism,  Essay  II., 
on  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  origin  of  the  soul  from  Pindar  to  Plato. 
^  Polybius,  iv.  31.  ®  Professor  Murray's  description  of  them. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  43 

date — "  Things  of  a  day  !  what  are  we,  and  what  not  ?  A 
dream  of  a  shadow  is  man  ;  yet  when  some  God-given  splendour 
falls,  a  glory  of  light  comes  over  him  and  his  life  is  sweet." 
Good  luck,  high  birth,  valour,  beauty,  and  compromise — it  is 
not  quite  the  sense  of  power. 

It  is  otherwise  with  his  contemporary  Aeschylus.  A 
quatrain  survives,  said  to  have  been  written  by  himself  for  his 
own  grave  in  Sicily  : 

Here  Aeschylus  lies  in  Gala's  land  of  corn, 

Euphorion's  son,  in  far-off  Athens  born  ; 

That  he  was  valiant  Marathon  could  show, 

And  long-haired  Medes  could  tell  it,  for  they  know. 

Would  any  but  himself  have  thought  of  leaving  out  all 
mention  of  his  poetry  ? — and  he  did  not  think  of  it — did  it 
v/ithout  thinking,  instinctively ;  for  what  was  his  poetry  ? 
"  Looking  steadfastly  into  the  silent  continents  of  Death  and 
Eternity,"  wrote  Carlyle  of  Sterling,  "  a  brave  man's  judgments 
about  his  own  sorry  work  in  the  field  of  Time  are  not  apt  to 
be  too  lenient."  Critics  have  felt  that  even  the  poetry  of 
Aeschylus  seems  inadequate  for  the  huge  conceptions  and  deep 
speculations  that  surge  in  his  mind — that  he  himself,  when  it 
reaches  its  most  splendid  heights,  sees  it  fall  short  of  the  wonder 
and  awe  of  the  world  which  Zeus  governs  by  laws  that  man's 
experience  slowly  opens  up  to  him. 

For  something  cloaked  within  the  night  my  mind 
Stands  listening : — the  divine  eyes  are  not  blind 
To  men  of  blood  :  the  man  of  mere  success, 
Luck's  thriver  in  defect  of  Righteousness, 
Doomed  by  the  dark  Avengers,  wanes  at  last. 
Dwindling,  until  he  fades  out  where  the  dim 
Lost  shadows  are  ;  and  there,  no  help  for  him.^ 

Never  before  had  man  so  realized  the  power  of  mind — 
here  was  the  world  reduced  to  order,  to  cosmic  order  and 
moral  law,  the  judgments  of  Zeus  himself  tracked  to  great 
principles  which  the  mind  could  seize  and  use — and  the  world, 
and  perhaps  Zeus  himself,  explained.  Was  not  all  mind  ? 
asked  Anaxagoras  ;  and  the  wits  of  Athens,  as  he  walked  the 
streets,  called  him  Noiis  ^ — a  sign  of  how  widely  the  knowledge 

1  Aesch.  Agam.  465  f.  (trans.  W.  G.  Headlam). 
^  Plut.  Pericles,  4. 


44  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

was  spread  of  what  the  leaders  of  thought  were  doing.    The 
sense  of  power  marks  the  age. 

Now  let  us  come  a  little  nearer  to  Athens,  and  see  what 
is  happening  in  our  three  spheres  of  world,  and  state,  and 
thought. 

The  great  Persian  Wars  left  nothing  undisturbed.  The 
commercial  centre  of  the  world  shifted  westward.  Miletus 
was  destroyed,  and  war  checked  the  inland  trade  with  Asia 
which  had  made  the  Ionian  seaports  great. ^  Meanwhile,  as 
the  graves  show,  culture  was  spreading  in  Italy,  and  the  trade 
with  Italians,  Sicilians,  Etruscans,  and  Carthaginians,  and  with 
the  Greeks  of  the  West,  was  growing.  Populations  were 
increasing,  and  the  supply  of  home-grown  wheat  was  proving 
too  small.  Wealth  waited  for  the  state  that  could  find  and 
control  new  wheat  areas.  Athens  lay  now  right  in  the  centre 
of  the  Greek  world,  and  before  long  city  and  harbour  were 
linked  by  strong  walls  and  made  into  a  twin  fortress  impregnable 
by  land.  And  if  she  did  not  own  the  wheat -growing  regions, 
she  controlled  the  trade  in  grain.  The  cornfields  of  Southern 
Russia  had  only  one  outlet — by  the  Hellespont,  and  Athens 
held  it — held  it  in  virtue  of  her  fleet  of  warships.  Meanwhile, 
from  the  days  of  Solon  and  Pisistratus  foreigners  with 
trades  had  been  settling  in  the  city.^  Solon  was  one  of  the 
greatest  economists  of  antiquity,  and  Pisistratus  one  of  the 
shrewdest  of  rulers ;  and  they  meant  to  have  an  Athens 
economically  strong  and  prosperous.  Industries  grew,  and 
free  labour  moved  in  from  the  country,  and  slave  labour  was 
imported  from  abroad.  And  then  the  slave  began  to  encroach 
on  the  freeman's  labour  market,  and  the  freeman  took  to  another 
and  a  greater  trade — the  greatest  of  all,  Empire-ruling ;  and 
that  too  brought  wealth  to  Athens.  Mines  were  opened  up, 
and  Laureion  still  continued  to  yield  silver,  while  on  Thasos 
and  in  Thrace  Athenian  valour  and  enterprise  made  Athenians 
masters  of  gold  production.  The  horrible  condition  of  the 
slaves  in  the  silver  mines  of  Attica  is  sometimes  noticed  by 
ancient  writers,  ^  but  there  is  no  indication  that  it  troubled 

1  On  this  see  Chapter  VII.  ^  Meyer,  Gr.  Gesch.  iii.  538. 

**  On  the  silver  mines,  cf.  Plut.  Nicias,  4  ;  Xen.  Mem.  ii.  5.  2,  and 
de  vectig.  4,  14,  on  Nicias'  management  of  his  mines  ;  also  Plut.  Cbmp. 
Nic.  et  Crassi,  i.     Also  compare  accounts  of  washing  alluvial  gold  in 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  45 

the  capitalists  or  the  public  conscience.  Mining  and  manu- 
facture, grain  and  the  carrying  trade  of  the  world,  brought 
wealth  and  brought  with  it  new  standards — a  new  scale  for 
the  measurement  of  riches  and  of  poverty — new  tastes  in 
food,  and  perhaps  a  new  sense  of  hunger. 

A  comic  poet,  Hermippos,  writing  about  429,  in  a  mock- 
heroic  passage  in  Homeric  hexameters  calls  on  the  Muses  in 
their  Oljrmpic  dwellings  to  tell  him  how  many  blessings, 
since  ever  Dionysos  launched  on  the  wine-dark  sea,  come  to 
Athens  in  black  stiips. 

With  or  without  their  aid  he  gives  a  list,  which  at  the  risk 
of  being  tedious  I  will  quote,  but  in  prose.  I  do  not  think 
it  should  be  tedious  to  anyone  who  wishes  to  study  the  hfe  of 
a  great  people,  for  more  turns  on  food  and  standard  comforts 
than  we  sometimes  realize,  and  a  list  such  as  this  has  a  story 
to  tell  of  the  whole  Mediterranean.  Some  of  the  imports  were 
perhaps  not  very  strictly  entered  at  the  Custom  House  ;  a 
comic  poet  may  smuggle  a  few  little  items  here  and  there. 

From  Cyrene,  he  says,  come  the  drug  silphium  and  hides  of 
cattle  ;  from  the  Hellespont,  mackerel  and  all  sorts  of  dried 
fish ;  from  Italy,  spelt  (or  wheat)  and  sides  of  beef ;  from 
Sitalkes  (king  of  the  Odrysians  in  Thrace),  the  itch  for  the 
Spartans — perhaps  what  is  to  be  re-exported  at  once  should  not 
be  reckoned  ;  from  King  Perdiccas  of  the  Macedonians,  lies  by 
the  shipload — it  is  strange  to  think  of  these  being  imported ;  ^ 
Syracuse  sends  pigs  and  cheese.  "  And  the  Corc3n:aeans — may 
Poseidon  destroy  them  upon  their  hollow  ships,  for  they  have 
their  mind  this  way  and  that  way  !  "  Then  from  Egypt  come 
sails  and  cord  ;  from  Syria  frankincense  ;  "  fair  Crete  sends 
cypress  for  the  gods  " — probably  for  temple-building  ;  Libya, 
abundance  of  ivory  ;  Rhodes  sends  raisins,  and  figs  that  give 
you  good  dreams  ;  Euboea,  pears  and  "  noble  sheep  "  ;  Phrygia, 

Lydia,  given  by  Strabo,  626 ;  Plut.  de  virt.  mulier.  27 ;  Herodotus,  vii. 
27  ;  Thasos  (gold),  Plut.  Cimon,  14  ;   Thrace  (gold),  Thuc.  iv.  105. 

^A  journalist  during  the  winter  of  1914-15  came  very  near  this 
notion,  when  he  suggested  that  Salonika  had  a  special  industry — the 
manufacture  and  export  of  rumour  -a  trade  that  kept  Greek,  Turk, 
and  Jew  busy,  when  all  the  other  trades  were  bad.  --  It  requires  no 
ships  to  carry  it,  which  is  a  pity,  because  the  export  of  rumour  would 
make  Salonika  the  busiest  shipping  place  in  the  world  "  {Daily  News, 
2  March,  191 5). 


46  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

slaves,  and  Arcadia,  soldiers  for  hire  ;  Pagasae  (the  Thessalian 
port),  slaves  again,  and  branded  slaves  at  that ;  the  Paphla- 
gonians  send  walnuts  and  rich  almonds,  "  for  these  are  the 
dainties  of  the  banquet  "  ;  Phoenicia,  the  fruit  of  the  date-palm 
and  fine  wheat  fiour ;  Carthage,  carpets  and  embroidered 
cushions.* 

This  list  we  can  supplement  from  a  curious  inscription, 
which  records  the  sale  of  the  property  of  the  men  condemned 
in  414-3  for  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermae  and  the  profanation 
of  the  mysteries. 2  Here  is  a  string  of  slaves,  with  the  prices 
they  fetched.  None  of  them  is  Greek,  and  some  of  them  come 
from  far-away  regions.  They  had  all  belonged  to  Cephisodoros, 
a  metic — a  foreigner,  that  is,  domiciled  in  the  Peiraieus.  The 
list  runs  thus  : — a  Thracian  woman,  165  drachmas  ;  another 
Thracian  woman,  155  dr. ;  a  Thracian  man,  170  dr. ;  a  Syrian, 
240  dr.  ;  a  Carian,  105  dr.  ;  an  Illyrian,  161  dr. ;  another 
Thracian  woman,  220  dr.  ;  a  Thracian,  115  dr.  ;  a  Scythian, 
144  dr.  ;  an  Illyrian,  121  dr. ;  a  Colchian,  153  dr.  ;  a  Carian 
boy,  124  dr.  ;  a  little  Carian  boy,  72  dr. ;  a  Syrian,  301  dr. ; 
a  man  [or  woman,  for  the  last  syllable  is  lost]  from  Melittene, 
151  dr.  ;  a  Lydian  woman,  170  dr.  Another  fragment  gives 
the  bedroom  furniture  of  Alcibiades,  which  we  may  leave  to 
the  purchasers. 

Meantime  Athens  was  becoming  an  Imperial  city.  The 
Persian  War  had  left  a  situation  that  demanded  leadership, 
and  Sparta  declined  the  task.  Pausanias,  her  king,  behaved 
badly  when  abroad — "  it  was  more  like  an  imitation  of  a 
tjnranny  than  a  commandership,"  says  Thucydides.^  So 
Sparta  sent  out  no  more  commanders,  afraid  lest  they  too 
should  degenerate,  and  wishful  in  any  case  to  be  rid  of  the 
Persian  War.*  A  later  generation  moralized  this — she  pre- 
ferred to  have  law-abiding  citizens  than  to  rule  all  Greece.^ 

^  Hermippos,  ap.  Athen.  27.  Cf.  Pericles,  in  Thuc.  ii.  38.  2.  Also 
Polybius,  iv.  38,  quoted  in  Chapter  X.  p.  305. 

2  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Hist.  Inscr.,  No.  72.  As  a  drachma  (6  obols) 
was  rather  a  high  wage  for  a  rower  in  the  fleet,  and  4  obols  a  fair  wage, 
we  may  roughly  reckon  a  drachma  as  equal  in  purchasing  power  to  a 
dollar  to-day,  and  calculate  how  much  our  fellow-creatures  were  worth. 
We  are  told  the  price  of  slaves  tended  to  go  down,  which  implies  an 
increased  supply. 

»  Thuc.  i.  95,  3.  *  Thuc.  i.  95,  7.  *  Flnt.  Aristides,  2^. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  47 

But  the  fact  is,  as  Thucydides  says,  Sparta  wished  to  be  rid 
of  the  war  ;  and  the  reason  was  that,  as  he  adds  elsewhere, 
most  of  her  arrangements  looked  toward  the  Helots,  for  pro- 
tection against  them.^  With  a  population  of  agricultural 
serfs — the  Messenians  among  them  conscious  of  ancient 
independence  and  a  glorious  struggle  for  freedom  in  the  past, 
and  still  able,  as  the  year  370  proved,  to  assert  it  and  maintain 
it — the  Spartans  numbered  about  one-sixteenth  of  the  com- 
munity, and  they  could  not  risk  foreign  war.  Defeat,  as  370 
showed,  and  accident,  as  the  earthquake  year  464  revealed — 
might  be  fatal  to  Sparta  at  home  ;  and  victory  might  be  as 
bad.  The  Helot  peril  was  always  there.  So  Sparta  gave  up 
foreign  empire  to  save  her  national  existence. 

To  Athens  the  leadership  of  Greece  was  abandoned ;  the 
allies  from  hatred  of  Pausanias  pressed  it  on  her,  and  she  was 
not  reluctant  to  undertake  it.  So  the  Confederacy  of  Delos 
was  formed,  and  it  grew  into  an  Empire — inevitably,  for  it 
was  not  long  before  the  constituent  states  became  weary  of 
contribution,  and  no  confederacy  can  exist  as  an  effective 
force  whose  members  can  retire  without  notice  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment — on  any  chance  vote  of  an  assembled  people. 
"  Empire,"  says  an  Athenian,  in  the  pages  of  Thucydides,^ 
"  we  did  not  take  for  ourselves  by  force  ;  you  (the  Spartans) 
would  not  wait  to  finish  the  war  with  the  barbarian,  and  the 
allies  came  to  us,  and  themselves  asked  us  to  be  leaders.  From 
the  nature  of  the  case  itself  we  were  at  first  compelled  to 
advance  our  Empire  to  its  present  state — fear  was  our  chief 
motive,  and  then  honour,  and  then  interest.  It  seemed  no 
longer  safe  when  many  hated  us,  when  some  had  already 
revolted  and  been  subdued,  when  we  found  you  no  longer  as 
friendly  as  you  had  been,  but  suspicious  and  at  variance,  to 
run  the  risk  of  letting  our  Empire  go,  especially  as  all  who 
left  us  would  fall  to  you.  And  no  one  can  quarrel  with  a 
fieople  if,  in  matters  involving  the  greatest  dangers,  it  make 
the  best  arrangement  it  can  for  itself." 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  sphere  of  thought.     Here  a  surprise 

awaits  us.     For  we  are  apt  to  think  of  the  fifth  century  in 

Greece,  and  especially  in  Athens,  as  the  age  of  illumination — 

Aufkldrung — the  time  when,  we  are  told,  Anaxagoras  and 

^  Thuc.  iv.  80.  *  Thuc.  i.  74. 


48  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Socrates  and  Euripides  moulded  the  thoughts  of  men.  But 
this  does  not  represent  the  whole  situation.  It  is  indeed  a 
period  of  change,  when  the  conservative  and  the  questioning 
spirit  met,  and  when  religion  shows  the  influence  of  both. 
Pericles  discussed  high  philosophy  with  Anaxagoras,  and  was 
"  filled  with  speculation  "  ;  ^  but  Plutarch's  story  of  the  ram's 
head  is  very  illuminative.  2  The  head  of  a  ram  with  one  horn, 
he  says,  was  brought  to  Pericles  from  his  farm  ;  and  Lampon, 
the  prophet,  seeing  the  horn  grew  stiff  and  strong  from  the 
middle  of  the  brow,  announced  the  future  extinction  of  the 
party  of  Thucydides,  the  son  of  Melesias,  and  the  sole  power 
of  Pericles.  Anaxagoras,  however,  split  the  skull  and  showed 
some  strange  malformation  within,  which  afforded  a  physical 
explanation  of  the  marvel,  and  he  captured  the  admiration 
of  those  present.  But,  when  Thucydides  was  ostracized,  and 
Pericles  attained  his  sole  guardianship  of  the  state,  Lampon 
in  his  turn  was  admired.  Plutarch  urges  that  both  may  have 
been  justified,  and  that  the  discovery  of  the  cause  does  not 
mean  the  invalidation  of  the  sign  ;  but  he  owns  that  this 
perhaps  belongs  to  another  discussion.  The  story  at  any  rate 
illustrates  the  workings  of  the  Athenian  mind.  And,  again, 
Cimon,  the  earlier  rival  of  Pericles,  is  the  hero  of  a  story  as 
significant.  When  he  took  the  island  of  Sc57ros,  he  was  led 
by  the  sign  of  an  eagle  scratching  the  earth  on  a  little  hill,  to 
make  a  great  discovery.  An  oracle  from  Delphi  had  bidden 
Athens  recover  the  bones  of  Theseus,  but  none  knew  where 
they  were,  save  that  Theseus  had  died  in  Scyros  ;  and  here 
in  the  little  hill  a  great  skeleton  was  found  with  a  sword  and 
a  brazen  spear.  With  all  possible  pomp  Cimon  brought 
Theseus  back  to  his  city  after  his  four  hundred  years  of  absence, 
and  won  great  goodwill  thereby.  So  that,  as  posterity  re- 
corded, the  people  at  the  next  Dionysia  gave  to  him  and 
his  fellow-generals  the  decision  as  to  the  prize  for  Tragedy. 
They  awarded  it,  not  to  Aeschylus,  but  to  the  younger  poet 
Sophocles ;  and  the  older  man  took  it  hardly,  and  left  Athens 
soon  after,  never  to  return.^    This  belongs  to  the  year  468. 

Perhaps  the  story  is  true  in  fact ;    it  is  certainly  true  in 
symbol.     Sophocles,  not  Aeschvlus,  is  the  great  Athenian  poet. 
The  questions  that  troubled  Aeschylus,  and  the  answers  he 
1  Plato,  Phaedrus,  269  e,  270.      *  Plut.  Pericles,  6,      ^  Plut.  Cimon,  8. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  49 

found  to  them,  went  beyond  the  common  thinking — too  far 
beyond  it.i  Sophocles  they  could  understand — at  least  they 
could  think  they  understood  him,  as  men  a  generation  or  two 
ago  found  Browning  obscure  and  Tennyson  lucid.  "  In- 
imitable, impeccable,  unpopular,"  Sophocles  has  been  called,^ 
but  he  was  not  unpopular  with  his  contemporaries.  Such  a 
play  as  the  Trachiniue,  beautiful  as  Deianira  is,  would  not 
have  satisfied  either  Aeschylus  or  Euripides,  Athens  made 
Sophocles  a  general,  to  be  the  colleague  of  Pericles  in  440,  in 
the  war  against  Samos,  and  Ion  in  his  Travels  tells  of  the 
lighter  side  of  the  life  of  the  generals  at  the  siege  as  he  witnessed 
it.#**  But  as  for  political  affairs,  he  was  neither  very  wise 
noi"  very  effective,  but  just  an  average  good  Athenian."  ^ 
The  Samian  expedition  was  a  wicked  one — as  bad  as  the 
Melian — and  Sophocles  made  no  protest,  wrote  no  Troades. 
He  stands  nearer  the  common  people  than  Euripides,  and  in 
his  last  play,  the  Oedipus  Coloneus,  he  gives  them,  at  a  time 
when  Athenian  prospects  grew  dimmer,  the  comfort  onc^ 
more  of  an  old  tradition — that  the  grave  of  Oedipus  in  Attic 
ground  is  to  form  a  perpetual  safeguard  for  Attica  against 
foreign  invaders.  Perhaps  this  must  not  be  pressed,  as 
Euripides  alludes  to  a  similar  legend  of  another  hero  ;  but  it 
fits  in  curiously  with  the  deed  of  Cimon  and  his  poet's 
first  victory. 

Delphi  had  been  forgiven  by  the  Greeks  for  its  rallying  to 
the  Persian,  but  the  defection  was  not  forgotten,  and  the 
oracle's  power  for  mischief  was  in  some  degree  weakened. 
But  other  oracles,  and  other  scenes  of  holy  games,  occupied 
men.  The  festival,  said  Strabo  of  the  Delos  of  a  later  djLy,  is 
"  rather  a  merchants'  affair  "  * — they  all  were  this,  though 
they  had  in  earlier  days  a  higher  significance.  The  clearer 
minds  of  Greece  had  not  Pindar's  enthusiasm  for  athletics  and 
athletes — Xenophanes  and  Euripides  denounced  them,  but  they 
had  some  flavour  of  religious  association  about  them  still. 

Perhaps  the  most  real  religions  of  Greece — in  our  modern 
sense — were^Orphism  and  the  Eleusinian  Mysteries,  both  cults 
of  initiation  and  purification,  secret  and  awful,  in  which  a 

1  Cf.  Meyer,  Fovsch.  ii.  258  ff. 

*  Mackail,  Lectures  on  Greek  Poetry,  145. 

*  Ion,  ap.  Athen.  603.  *  Strabo,  486. 


50  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

hidden  knowledge  of  another  life,  a  life  of  woe  or  of  happiness, 
was  imparted,  and  the  clue  given  by  which  the  better  path 
might  be  found.  What  happened  was  that  men  and  women 
were  put  into  frames  of  mind  and  had  emotions,  Aristotle 
said.^  "  Quacks  and  prophets,"  says  Plato,^  "  go  to  rich 
men's  doors  and  persuade  them  that  they  have  power  from 
the  gods,  by  means  of  sacrifices  and  chants,  to  cure  any  wrong 
deed  of  their  own  or  their  ancestors  in  a  course  of  pleasures 
and  feasts,"  as  if  they  could  "rid  us  of  trouble  over  there  ; 
but  if  we  have  not  sacrificed,  terrible  things  await  us." 
Pericles  himself  died  with  an  amulet  hung  round  his  neck  by 
his  womenfolk. 3  Foreign  gods  began  to  follow  their  wor- 
shippers to  Athens  and  to  gather  adherents  among  Athenians 
— the  Phrygian  Mother  of  the  gods,  Sabazios,  Bendis,  Ammon, 
and  the  like. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  in  the  famous  Funeral  Speech 
of  Pericles  there  is  no  reference  to  the  piety  of  the  Athenians, 
whether  Pericles  made  such  a  reference  or  did  not.  But 
evidence  is  forthcoming  in  the  historians.  Anaxagoras  was 
threatened  with  impeachment  for  impiety  ;  but,  said  posterity, 
Pericles  smuggled  him  out  of  the  city  somehow.  The  same 
charge  was  brought  against  Aspasia  by  Hermippos  the  comic 
poet.*  The  terror  and  cruelty  of  the  Athenians,  waked  by 
the  mutilation  of  the  Hermae,  is  another  evidence  of  their 
religious  attitude,  and  the  career  and  failure  of  Nicias  illus- 
trates it  vividly.  But  the  crowning  stroke  of  the  century 
was  the  hemlock-cup  given  to  Socrates. 

Yet  for  all  this  it  was  the  age  of  enlightenment,  when  the 
human  mind  seems  to  have  moved  with  the  greatest  power 
and  clearness  and  the  highest  consciousness  of  its  power. 
If  we  sum  up  all  that  Greece  has  meant  to  the  world,^and 
then  analyse  it,  we  shall  find  that,  with  the  sole  exception  of 
Homer,  every  Greek  writer  of  the  highest  rank  was  living 
sooner  or  later  at  some  stage  of  his  career  in  Athens  in  the 
fifth  century — and  found  it  in  the  main  congenial.  In  every 
sphere  of  Greek  life  the  zenith  seems  to  be  attained  by  these 

^  Cf.  Aristotle,  Frag.,  ed.  Heitz,  p.  40,  quoted  by  S3/nesius,  Dio, 
p.  48. 

2  Plato,  Rep.  ii.  364A-36SA.  ^  Plut.  Pericles,  38. 

*  Plut.  Pericles,  32. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  51 

men.  In  short,  this  is  the  time  when,  above  all,  new  impulses 
quickened  poetry,  art,  architecture,  history,  philosophy,  and 
music.  It  was  of  the  very  essence  of  the  Periclean  conception 
of  Democracy  that  it  should  be  so — what  a  German  scholar  ^ 
calls  die  Ausbildung  und  Geltendmachung  der  Individualitdt — 
when  each  individual  should  achieve  his  maximum  of  develop- 
ment and  to  the  utmost  of  that  maximum  be  available  and 
operative  for  the  community.  But  this  has  brought  us  to 
the  consideration  of  Athenian  Democracy. 

It  is  no  copy,  says  Pericles,  made  from  the  constitutions 
of  neighbours  ;  rather  it  is  a  model — "  in  a  word,  I  would  say 
that  our  whole  state  is  an  education  of  Greece."  ^  Three 
points  stand  out  in  his  claim,  which,  without  sticking  too 
closely  to  his  actual  words,  we  may  consider. 

First  of  all,  then,  in  Athens  ttoXa?  and  TroXtV?;?  stand  nearest 
in  meaning.  "  The  state  is  in  the  hands  not  of  the  few,  but 
of  the  many."  Lydia,  Egj^t,  Persia,  and  the  barbarian  tribes 
of  the  North  might  have  kings  or  chieftains — 

The  enormous  rule  of  many  made  for  one ; 

Sparta  belonged  to  a  smaU  handful  of  families,  who  were  main- 
tained by  fifteen  times  their  number  of  serfs,  against  whom 
every  Spartan  institution  was  a  part  of  one  huge  system  oi 
safeguard.  Thessaly  was  a  country  of  noble  families,  Boeotia 
had  oligarchies.  In  every  case,  as  in  so  many  countries  to-day, 
the  land  and  the  people  belonged  to  the  ruler.  The  civil 
servant  and  the  policeman  and  the  tax-collector  —  who  in 
modern  democracies  play  so  large  a  part — were  not  the  state 
in  Athens.  The  tacit  theory,  that  a  good  citizen's  function 
is  to  pay  his  taxes  punctually  and  move  on  when  a  policeman 
tells  him,  is  never  quite  eliminated  from  the  British  mind ; 
nor  the  other  equally  malign  feeling  that  to  be  a  real  citizen 
in  a  sense  worth  reckoning  one  must  own  land  if  possible — at 
any  rate  "  have  a  stake  in  the  country  " — and  hold  the  great 
traditional  opinions,  especially  in  Church  matters.  Indeed  it 
may  be  said  that  "  citizen  "  is  in  England  a  lowly  word — 
that  wakes  in  the  mind  the  picture  of  a  futile  paterfamilias 
writing  a  dull  letter  to  the  local  newspaper  and  signing  it 
Pro  Bono  Publico  ;  it  stands  on  a  level  with  Ratepayer. 
^  Nestle,  Euripides,  p.  194.  ^  Thuc.  ii.  41,  i. 


52  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

But  to  the  Athenian  the  word  had  another  and  a  more 
glorious  connotation.  It  stood  with  its  analogue — polls  and 
folites  are  an  equation.  The  citizen  is  the  state,  in  a  most 
amazing  way.  The  policeman  is  a  slave,  a  Scythian,  whom 
anybody  might  have  bought  at  the  auction,  if  the  man  deputed 
by  the  state's  authority  had  not  gone  a  drachma  or  two 
higher.  Civil  servants  hardly  existed,  and  the  nearest 
approach  to  them  that  Athenians  knew  they  signally  despised. 
No  boy  was  born  of  free  parents  but  might  be  as  much  a 
citizen  as  any  other — might  lead  the  Ecclesia,  be  strategos, 
ambassador,  anything  that  anyone  else  was.  In  spite  of 
families  whose  names  recur,  Athenian  history  is  full  of  new 
names.  And  there  was  equality  in  the  law  courts — Equal 
Law  and  Equal  Speech  are  two  names  for  Greek  Democracy ; 
and,  as  the  Persian  in  Herodotus  says,  "  the  very  name  is 
so  beautiful."  ^  The  earth  is  not  the  lord's,  nor  justice  the 
bought  right  of  the  rich.  Judges  are  not  made  of  party 
hacks.  Judge  and  jury  were  the  state — the  citizen  again, 
grouped  in  hundreds  or  thousands  as  might  be  ;  and  any 
man  had  access  to  them.  Wherever  English  democracy  is 
mosf  conspicuously  a  sham,  Athenian  democracy  was  real. 
No  registration  laws  were  made,  drafted  and  designed,  to 
jockey  the  citizen  out  of  his  rights.  And  the  natural  result 
followed.  The  Athenian  was  pleased  with  his  state.  Solon, 
in  Mr.  Zimmern's  admirable  phrase,  associated  the  idea  of 
kindness  with  the  state  ;  and  then,  as  Pericles  put  it,  the 
citizens  fell  in  love  with  Athens. 

In  the  second  place,  Athenian  Democracy,  as  we  saw,  asked 
the  utmost  of  every  citizen — not  merely  in  blood  and  money, 
as  the  modern  state  does  of  us  all,  nor  voluntary  service  on  some 
bench  of  county  gentry  or  board  of  guardians,  but  in  service 
of  every  kind — in  blood,  in  money,  in  brain,  in  skill  of  hand, 
in  clearness  of  intellect,  in  beauty  of  word  and  tone,  in  dedication 
to  every  public  interest.  In  everything  he  must  take  part. 
"  Alone  among  men  we  consider  him  who  takes  no  share  in 
these  matters  not  quiet  or  unambitious,  but  useless."  ^  So 
Pericles  says.  One  of  his  successors  in  high  place  in  Athens 
saw  fit  to  pronounce  a  eulogy  on  Stupidity,  something  in  the 
modem  style — on  the  advantages  of  dullness  and  not  thinking 

1  Herodotus,  iii.  80.  ^  Thuc.  ii.  40,  2. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  53 

oneself  cleverer  than  the  laws.^  Pericles  praises  his  people 
for  their  open  eyes  and  quick  minds — "  We  can  judge  the  issue, 
at  any  rate,  if  we  cannot  ourselves  strike  out  the  plan  ;  and  we 
do  not  hold  that  discussion  spoils  action — on  the  contrary,  we 
hold  that  the  want  of  that  sense  of  things  which  comes  by 
discussion  before  actual  action  is  the  greater  danger.  It  is,  in 
fact,  our  distinguishing  mark  that  the  same  men  will  calculate 
the  risk  and  take  it ;  while  elsewhere  ignorance  gives  courage, 
and  calculation  brings  fear.  Surely  those  must  be  the  bravest 
in  spirit,  who,  with  the  clearest  realization  of  what  is  terrible 
and  what  is  pleasant,  will  yet  not  turn  away  from  danger."  2 

And,  lastly,  there  is  the  steady  humanization  of  life  in 
AthenSi  "  They  toil  on,"  says  the  Corinthian  speaker, ^ 
"  with  troubles  and  dangers  all  the  days  of  their  lives,  and 
least  of  all  men  have  any  enjoyment  of  what  they  have,  because 
they  will  always  be  getting,  because  they  have  no  idea  of  a 
festival  but  to  do  what  occasion  requires,  but  count  easy 
tranquillity  as  much  a  misfortune  as  toilsome  occupation. 
So  that  if  one  said  in  a  word  that  they  were  born  never  to  have 
rest  themselves,  nor  to  let  others  have  it,  he  would  speak 
aright."  Not  at  all,  says  Pericles ;  no  city  has  so  many 
recreations  for  the  human  spirit,  so  many  annual  contests  and 
sacrifices,  nor  so  man^^  rviaasures  in  private  life.  It  cannot  be 
better  put  than  in  the  famous  sentence  :  "  We  love  beauty 
without  being  extravagant,  and  we  love  wisdom  without  being 
soft." 

Five  or  six  years  after  Pericles  delivered  this  speech,  an 
opponent  wrote  a  small  pamphlet  on  Athenian  Democracy  in 
the  year  424.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  piece  of  writing,  though 
neither  the  -wTiter's  name  nor  his  exact  object  is  known.  It 
looks  as  if,  an  oligarch  in  sympathies  himself,  he  were  writing 
for  others  of  the  same  convictions,  for  men  who  hated 
Democracy  as  much  as  he  did,  but  who  did  not  so  fully  realize 
the  Athenian  situation.  Did  he  mean  to  dissuade  them  from 
action  ? 

"  About  the  constitution  of  the  Athenians,"  he  begins — 
"  that  they  have  chosen  this  kind  of  constitution,  I  do  not 
praise  them,  because  in  so  doing  they  chose  that  the  blackguards 

*  Thuc.  iii.  2)7  ',  Cleon's  speech.    See  further  in  Chapter  III.  pp.  79,  80. 

*  Thuc.  ii.  40,  2,  3.  2  Thuc.  i.  70. 


54  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

should  be  better  off  than  the  decent  people.  For  that  I  do  not 
praise  them  ;  but,  since  once  it  seemed  good  to  them,  I  will 
show  that  they  really  manage  things  well  for  the  preservation 
of  their  constitution,  and  are  adroit  in  their  other  arrangements, 
where  to  other  Greeks  they  seem  to  be  making  mistakes." 

To  this  thought  he  recurs  after  some  pages — "  I  forgive 
Democracy  to  the  Demos  ;  anybody  may  be  forgiven  for  doing 
well  by  himself  "  (2,  20).  He  does  not  praise  this  Democracy, 
but  he  thinks  they  act  wisely  and  well  from  their  own  point  of 
view,  which  is  to  keep  the  form  of  government  they  prefer.  "  In 
every  country,"  he  says  (i,  5),  "  the  best  element  is  hostile 
to  Democracy  " — it  has  education  and  insight ;  the  demos  is 
full  of  ignorance,  disorder;  and  general  blackguardliness — the 
common  effect  of  poverty  and  the  pursuits  which  it  involves. 
If  then  the  decent  people  spoke  in  the  Ecclesia,  it  would  be  in 
their  own  interests  and  not  advantageous  to  the  democrats ; 
so  now  any  blackguardly  fellow  can  get  up  and  say  what  he 
thinks  will  suit  him  and  his  like  (i,  6) — they  know  well  enough 
that  his  ignorance  and  goodwill  taken  together  will  help  them 
more  than  "  the  worth  and  wisdom  and  dislike  of  the  decent 
man."  It  means  bad  government,  but  it  means  also  the 
continuance  of  Democracy,  and  they  prefer  that.  Similarly 
when  they  deal  with  allied  cities,  they  deliberately  favour  the 
worse  part  of  the  population  ;  and  where  they  have  not  done  so, 
it  has  been  a  mistake  (3,  10,  11).  They  make  the  rich  pay 
heavily  in  tragic  choruses,  gymnasiarchies,  trierarchies — and 
they  have  plenty  of  festivals — too  many,  in  fact,  and  the 
business  of  the  law  courts  is  congested.  But  then  the  demos 
does  well  on  it — wrestling-grounds,  public  baths,  and  so  forth 
in  plenty — and  the  rabble  has  all  the  good  of  them,  for  the 
rich  have  their  own  and  do  not  care  to  use  the  public  ones. 

In  Athens,  he  says,  a  slave  will  not  make  way  for  you  in 
the  street,  and  you  cannot  pimch  him  for  it,  for  you  never  can 
be  sure  that  he  is  not  a  free  Athenian.  For  the  free  citizens  go 
as  shabbily  dressed,  and  "  they  are  not  a  bit  better  in  feature  " 
(i,  10).  In  Sparta  things  are  different — they  were  indeed. 
But  in  Athens  there  is  free  speech  for  slave  and  metic.  Why  ? 
Because  the  city  needs  the  metics  on  account  of  the  multi- 
tude of  trades  and  of  the  navy  (i,  12).  The  sea-power  of  Athens 
he  discusses  with  insight — the  advantage  of  ruling  islands, 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  55 

of  controlling  commerce,  of  managing  the  law  business  of  all 
the  subjects  ;  and  it  is  after  all  the  masses  who  row  and  steer 
the  warships,  and  these  make  the  Empire  and  secure  the  com- 
mercial supremacy  of  Athens,  and  with  it  the  wealth  of  the 
city  and  the  imports.  Of  course  if  Athens  were  an  island — 
perhaps  he  is  referring  to  a  doctrine  Pericles  used  to  enforce — 
the  Athenians  would  be  immune  from  every  attack  ;  but  they 
are  not  an  island,  and  the  country  folk  and  the  rich  get  the 
brunt  of  every  invader,  while  "  the  demos,  very  weU  knowing 
that  they  will  bum  and  cut  down  nothing  that  belongs  to  it, 
lives  at  ease  "  (2, 14). 

There,  then,  stands  Athenian  Democracy.  Many  things 
might  be  thought  of  to  improve  it,  but  they  would  not  be  of 
much  use,  as  long  as  it  remained  a  Democracy ;  and  there  is 
no  chance  of  altering  that.  There  are  not  enough  malcontents. 
And  there  he  ends. 

It  does  not  take  very  close  reading  of  these  two  accounts 
of  Athenian  Democracy  to  see  hints  of  the  uglier  aspects  which 
the  sense  of  power  in  a  nation  may  take.  The  power  of  the 
human  spirit  over  the  material  world  may  prove  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  mind,  or,  on  the  opposite  side,  it  may  lead  to 
its  final  enslavement  to  the  material.  What  will  this  new 
power  over  land  and  sea  mean  ?  Hermippos  and  the  Athenian 
oligarch  suggest  it  may  mean  luxury — things  to  eat  and  carpets, 
beside  raw  materials  for  ship-building  and  house-building. 
Athenian  luxury  would  seem  a  poor  thing  indeed  in  modern 
England  or  America  ;  the  limited  range  in  diet  and  drink,  the 
sheer  discomfort  in  household  arrangements,  even  among  the 
rich,  would  be  intolerable  to  our  middle  and  upper  classes.  We 
forget  the  lower  classes  in  such  reckonings,  as  the  Athenians 
overlooked  the  slave  in  the  mines.  Nicias  leased  his  mining- 
slaves  to  a  contractor,  stipulating  to  receive  an  obol  a  day  per 
slave,  and  the  same  number  to  be  returned  to  him  when  the 
contract  expired — they  could  not  possibly  be  the  same  men.^ 
The  growing  appeal  of  Comfort  is  conspicuous  in  Athenian 
history — better  feeding,  less  drudgery,  less  risk,  are  what  men 
want.  One  way  to  obtain  it  is  to  limit  the  number  of  children, 
and  this  in  ancient  Athens  was  effected  after  the  children  were 
bom.  This  is  evident  in  many  ways.  Aristophanes,  for 
*  Xen.  de  vectig.  4,  14. 


56  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

instance,  in  the  parahasis  of  the  Clouds,  where  the  chorus- 
leader  speaks  on  the  poet's  behalf,  uses  a  metaphor  drawn 
from  the  practice.  He  was  very  young  when  he  brought  out 
his  first  comedy — "  I  was  still  a  virgin,  and  it  was  not  permitted 
me  to  bear  a  child,  so  I  exposed  it,  and  another  girl  found 
it  and  took  it  up,  and  you  (the  audience)  nurtured  it  nobly 
and  educated  it."  ^  A  great  many  of  the  comedies  in  a  later 
Athenian  day  depend  for  their  plot  on  the  exposure  of  girl- 
babies  by  well-to-do  parents.  In  Plato's  ideal  state  "  the 
issue  of  inferior  parents,  and  all  imperfect  children  that  are 
born  to  others,  will  be  concealed,  as  is  fitting,  in  some  mysterious 
and  unknown  hiding-place  "  2 — a  euphemism,  says  Dr.  Adam, 
for  infanticide.  "  As  for  the  exposure  and  rearing  of  children," 
says  Aristotle,  "  let  there  be  a  law  that  no  deformed  child  shall 
live  ;  but  where  there  are  too  many  (for  in  our  state  population 
has  a  limit),  when  couples  have  children  in  excess,  and  the 
state  of  feeling  is  averse  to  the  exposure  of  offspring,  let  abortion 
be  procured  before  sense  and  life  have  begun."  ^  When  philo- 
sophers and  framers  of  ideal  constitutions  accept  such  practices 
on  eugenic  grounds,  ordinary  people  will  use  them  for  reasons 
with  less  scientific  nonsense  about  them. 

The  state  itself  may  be  intoxicated  with  its  own  sense  of 
power.  The  utter  absence  of  moral  considerations  in  the 
speeches  of  public  men,  as  given  by  Thucydides,  is  one  sign 
of  this.  The  Melian  affair  is  the  standard  instance — the 
aggression  by  Athens  was  unprovoked,  and  when  the  place 
surrendered  the  Athenians  killed  all  the  men  they  took  and 
sold  the  women  and  children  as  slaves.  This  was  not  out  of 
the  way  in  Greek  warfare,  but  in  the  discussion  between  the 
Athenian  envoys  and  the  Melian  magistrates  some  things  are 
said  with  terrible  explicitness.  "  Of  the  gods  we  believe,  and 
of  men  we  know,  that  by  a  necessary  law  of  their  nature  they 
rule  wherever  they  can.  And  it  is  not  as  if  we  were  the  first 
to  make  this  law,  or  to  act  upon  it  when  made ;  ...  so,  as  far 
as  the  gods  are  concerned,  we  have  no  fear  and  no  reason  to 
fear  the  worse."  *  We  learn  from  Plutarch  that  Alcibiades, 
though  not  here  named  by  Thucydides,  was  largely  responsible 

^  Aristophanes,  Niib.  530.  *  Plato,  Rep.  460c. 

^  Aristotle,  Pol.  vii.  16,  15,  p.  1335&  (trans.  Jowett). 

*  Thuc.  V.  105.     See  also  Chapter  III.  p.  75,  for  further  discussion. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  57 

for  the  affair  of  Melos,  but  when  we  go  back  to  Pericles  himself 
this  is  what  we  find.  "  You  cannot  renounce  your  empire, 
even  if  in  the  panic  of  the  moment  some  inert  spirit  is  for  playing 
the  honest  man."  ^  The  triple  innuendo  is  not  accident — fear 
— slackness — and  the  exquisite  sense  of  right  and  wrong  they 
together  produce.  In  Thucydides  it  is  curiously  interesting 
to  mark  how  the  great  Periclean  watchwords  are  caught  up  by 
Cleon.2  When  IDiodotus  opposes  Cleon's  policy  of  killing  the 
Mitylenaeans,  he  does  so,  not  on  moral  grounds,  but  for  ex- 
pediency— to  spare  would  be  the  wiser  policy.  To  such  a 
point  does  the  sense  of  power  bring  a  nation. 

Lastly  in  the  sphere  of  thought,  this  same  sense  of  power 
shows  the  same  decline — ^here  into  a  hard,  quick,  shallow 
rationalism.  If  sophist  was  an  honourable  term  in  the  fifth 
century,  it  did  not  acquire  its  later  connotation  by  accident. 
One  example  will  do.  "  This  very  night,"  says  Socrates, 
"  before  ever  it  was  dawn,  Hippocrates,  son  of  ApoUodorus 
and  brother  of  Phason,  fell  to  beating  my  door  with  his  stick 
very  loudly  ;  and  when  some  one  opened,  in  he  charged  at  a 
rush,  and  called  out  aloud,  '  Socrates  !  are  you  awake  or 
asleep  ?  '  I  knew  his  voice  and,  '  Hullo  !  Hippocrates  !  '  I 
cried,  '  is  there  any  bad  news  ?  '  '  No  news  at  all  but  good 
news,'  said  he.  '  Good,'  said  I.  '  What  is  it,  and  why  have 
you  come  at  this  time  of  day  ?  '  '  Protagoras  has  come,'  said 
he,  and  he  came  and  stood  by  me.  '  Just  now  ?  '  said  I,  '  and 
you  have  just  heard  ?  '  '  No,  by  the  gods,'  he  said,  '  in  the 
evening.'  Then  he  felt  for  the  bed  and  sat  down  by  my  feet, 
and,  'Yes,  in  the  evening,'  he  said,  'getting  here  very  late 
from  Oinoe.'  "  The  young  man  wants  Socrates  to  speak  for 
him  to  the  great  teacher.  In  the  morning  they  go  to  the  house 
where  he  is  staying  and  with  some  difficulty  get  in.  Protagoras 
was  walking  in  the  long  vestibule  with  some  friends  and  behind 
was  a  "  chorus  "—mostly  foreigners  "  whom  Protagoras 
gathers  from  every  city,  through  which  he  passes,  charming 
them  with  his  voice  like  Orpheus."     "  And  I  was  particularly 

^  Thuc.  ii.  6t,  (Jowett).  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  translates  it — 
''  is  hankering  after  righteousness  " — in  his  fine  introductory  essay  to 
his  translations  of  Hippolytus  and  The  Bacchae. 

^  See  Chapter  III.  p.  74,  on  the  assonances  between  Pericles  and 
Cleon,  in  Thucydides, 


58  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

amused,"  says  Socrates,  "  to  watch  this  chorus — ^how  careful 
they  were  never  to  get  in  his  way — ^how,  whenever  he  turned, 
they  divided  decently  and  in  order  this  side  and  that,  and  fell 
in  behind." 

And  what  had  he  to  tell  these  eager  disciples  ?  TLdvrwv 
puerpov  dvOpoyTTo^  ^ — the  relativity  of  knowledge,  a  certain 
swift  and  impulsive  Pragmatism  perhaps — grammar — and, 
"  in  respect  to  the  gods,  I  am  unable  to  know  either  that  they 
are  or  are  not." 

What  these  successive  sophists  did  may  be  best  seen  in 
the  Callicles  whom  Plato  draws  with  such  skill  in  the  Gorgias — 
an  eager,  quick,  splendid  figure,  full  of  ideas  with  which  after 
some  centuries  Nietzsche  has  come  forward  again.  "  It  is  only 
by  custom  and  convention  that  doing  wrong  is  more  disgrace- 
ful ;  by  nature  what  is  worse  is  more  disgraceful — suffering 
wrong,  to  wit.  This  suffering,  this  submission  to  wrong,  is  not 
a  man's  part — it's  a  slave's,  who  had  better  die  than  live — 
whoever  he  is  who  cannot  help  himself  against  wrong  and  insult, 
himself  and  those  he  cares  about.  The  law  makers,  to  be  sure, 
are  the  M^eak  and  the  many.  It  is  with  a  view  to  themselves 
and  their  own  interest  that  they  frame  their  laws  and  bestow 
praise  and  blame,  to  frighten  those  who  are  more  powerful,  and 
who  might  take  advantage  of  them,  into  not  taking  advantage 
of  them  ;  so  they  tell  them  that  self-seeking  is  disgraceful  and 
unjust,"  and  so  forth. ^     In  fact,  Melos  in  daily  life. 

Callicles  is  not  alone.  There  is  Critias,  the  friend  of 
Socrates,  whose  account  of  the  origin  of  the  gods  Sextus 
Empiricus  preserved  for  us.  Life,  he  says,  was  full  of  disorder, 
so  at  last  men  made  laws  to  punish  it ;  but  the  laws  could  not 
see  in  the  dark  ;  and  then  some  shrewd  and  witty  man  invented 
gods  who  could  see  in  the  dark — could  with  the  mind  see  and 
hear,  think,  and  mark  all  said  and  done  among  men.  It  was 
a  pleasant  and  a  helpful  device — "  with  a  false  reason  covering 
truth."  The  gods  would  dwell,  where  thunder  and  lightning 
might  lead  men  to  expect  them  ;  and  so  "he  quenched  lawless- 
ness with  laws." 

The  sense  of  power  is  a  great  thing  for  a  nation  or  for  a  man. 
But  it  seems  that  something  else  is  needed  as  well — some  other 
principle  on  which  life  can  rest.     That  men  of  Athens  realized 

^  See  Chapter  IX.  p.  279.  ^  Plato,  Gorg.  483B. 


THE  AGE  OF  PERICLES  59 

this  also  and  set  themselves  to  find  some  new  foundation  for 
society,  to  study  human  life  till  they  should  find  in  it  what 
does  in  fact  keep  it  from  the  utter  dissolution  threatened  by  the 
unchartered  freedom  of  the  new  schools  ;  and  that  they  did 
find  a  truth  in  human  life  and  human  society  deeper  and 
stronger  than  the  weapons  of  sophistry  and  man's  baser 
instincts  could  uproot  or  destroy — is  part  of  the  glory  of  this 
wonderful  century. 


CHAPTER    III 

THUCYDIDES 

IT  is  difficult  to  think  of  any  great  book  that  has  per- 
manently held  the  interest  of  mankind  without  some 
element  of  autobiography.  To  reach  the  heart,  as  Goethe 
said,  a  book  must  come  from  the  heart ;  and  that  is  auto- 
biography at  once.  It  may  be  that  the  writer  frankly  takes 
us  into  his  confidence  like  Herodotus  and  Horace  among  the 
ancients,  or  Montaigne  and  Charles  Lamb  in  modern  times  ; 
though  even  the  frankest  of  authors  has  something  he  keeps 
to  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the  other  type — the 
man  who  sinks  himself  and  his  affairs  deliberately  and  of 
purpose  ;  and  yet,  in  his  case  too,  his  own  experience  of  life 
will  be  written  in  every  sentence,  whether  we  can  read  it  or 
not.  An  outlook  is  implied  in  every  judgment  upon  life — in 
every  judgment  upon  an  individual  man  or  his  chance  act ; 
and  an  outlook,  if  we  can  see  or  feel  what  it  is,  reveals  a  per- 
sonality. The  great  writer  may  hide  himself,  he  may  do  his 
utmost  to  make  his  writing  (in  our  modern  phrase)  objective, 
but  his  very  reticence  only  adds  to  his  impression.  It  is 
only  makers  of  lexicons  and  manuals  who  achieve  the 
objective,  and  such  works  die  or  never  live. 

"  The  War,  of  which  Thucydides,  son  of  Olorus,  wrote  the 
history,"  has  never  failed  to  interest  mankind,  so  momentous 
the  issues,  so  vivid  and  so  various  the  force  of  the  writer. 
But  perhaps  he  never  guessed  how  profound  would  be  the 
interest,  quite  apart  from  the  story,  which  his  readers  would 
feel  in  the  great  character  that  moves  through  the  great  events 
and  makes  them  live,  that  looks  into  life  so  profoundly,  that 
feels  so  intensely,  and,  using  a  style  so  restrained,  so  artificed 
and  so  cold,  can  yet  inflame  the  reader  with  a  throbbing  love 
of  Athens,  despite  all  the  faults  and  the  crimes  which  he  so 

relentlessly  lays  bare. 

60 


THUCYDIDES  6i 

All  that  we  really  know  of  the  man,  he  tells  us  himself — 
tells  us  to  authenticate  his  work  and  to  explain  how  it  came 
to  be  what  it  is — baffling  the  curiosity  he  provokes.  That  his 
name  would  live  he  must  have  known  ;  he  cannot  but  have 
felt  what  he  was  doing  when  he  wrote  his  own  name  and  his 
father's  and  the  name  of  his  city  into  a  work  that  was  to  be 
"  a  possession  for  ever  "  ;  and  he  was  content  to  leave  the 
matter  there.  The  ancients  tell  us  one  thing  and  another 
about  him,  long  afterwards — some  of  their  information  being 
trivial  and  wrong,  some  of  it  significant  if  we  could  be  sure  of 
it.  But,  when  all  is  added  up  and  weighed,  the  biography 
is  a  short  one. 

His  father's  name  was  Olorus,  he  tells  us,  and  in  the  next 
chapter  (iv.  105,  i)  he  adds  in  his  curious  way,  that  "  Brasidas 
learnt  that  Thucydides  had  rights  of  working  the  mines  in 
that  region  of  Thrace,  and  from  that  had  influence  among 
the  chief  men  of  the  mainland."  Plutarch  says  that  Olorus 
had  his  own  name  from  an  ancestor,^  and  modern  scholars 
have  made  the  easy  guess  that  he  called  his  son  after  the 
statesman,  Pericles'  rival,  the  son  of  Melesias.  The  ancestor 
Olorus,  if  we  can  rely  on  him,  was  a  Thracian  prince,  it  appears, 
or  a  chief,  if  prince  is  too  large  or  too  modern  a  term.  Plutarch 
adds  that  father  and  son  were  connected  with  the  family  of 
Cimon,  son  of  Miltiades,  that  the  mines  were  gold-mines  at 
Scapte  Hyle,  that  the  historian  was  murdered  there,  and  his 
body  brought  to  Athens  and  buried  with  the  house  of  Cimon, 
alongside  Elpinice,  Cimon's  famous  sister ;  but  he  remarks 
that  they  belonged  to  different  demes.  The  family  of  Miltiades, 
since  the  days  of  Pisistratus,  had  had  Thracian  and  princely 
connexions,  but  scholars  are  divided  as  to  whether  or  not  to 
accept  the  kinship  of  the  historian  with  the  great  house. 2 
With  the  acceptance  of  it  comes  a  further  question  as  to  his 

^  Cimon,  4.  Herodotus,  vi.  93,  says  the  Thracian  father-in-law 
of  Miltiades  was  called  Olorus.  The  historian's  grandfather  may  have 
given  his  son  a  fancy  name,  as  Periander  of  Corinth  called  his  son 
Psammetichos.  Cimon  himself,  as  his  political  opponents  noted, 
gave  his  sons  foreign  names  and  fancy  ones,  after  the  states  for  which 
he  was  proxenos — viz.  Lacedaimonios,  Thessalos,  and  Eleios. 

*  Busolt  doubts  it;  Grote,  v.  275  n.,  and  Hermann  Peter,  Wahrhett 
und  Kunst,  p.  105,  accept  it.  It  seems  probable  enough,  if  not  quite 
proven. 


62  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

attitude  to  Pericles,  which  we  shall  have  to  discuss.  The 
rider  that  "  Thucydides'  Greek  is  at  best  good  Thracian  "  ^ 
need  not  perhaps  occupy  us  very  long. 

That  his  youth  and  education  were  essentially  Athenian 
is  plain  to  read  on  every  page  of  his  work.  All  the  main 
impulses  and  interests  of  Athens  are  there — rhetoric,  tragedy, 
philosophy,  empire,  autonomy,  and  political  theory.  He  owes 
his  education  to  sophists,  poets,  philosophers,  soldiers,  and 
statesmen — to  Athens.  JloXt?  dvBpa  StSda-Kei.^  He  embodies 
in  himself  what  has  been  called  the  unity  or  integrity  of  the 
age  of  Pericles.  His  early  manhood  must  have  fallen  in  the 
days  when  Pericles  was  at  the  very  height  of  his  power,  for 
when  the  Peloponnesian  War  began,  he  was  "of  an  age  to 
take  it  in  and  understand  it,"  ^  and  he  expected  it  to  be  a 
great  war  and  of  unique  importance.^  What  is  more,  after 
a  very  few  years  he  was  actually  elected  general.  When  the 
plague  came  to  Athens  in  430,  Thucydides  was  there  and  took 
it  and  recovered.  He  had  already  his  lifelong  passion  for 
accurate  detail — it  was  probably  bom  in  him  ;  and,  sick  as 
he  was,  he  carefully  noted  his  symptoms,  and  left  in  writing 
the  most  famous  description  of  a  disease  that  antiquity  has 
given  us.  More  interesting  still,  for  our  present  purpose,  is 
the  consideration  of  his  election  as  general  for  the  year  424. 

Human  nature,  he  suggests — and  Goethe  says  it  too — is 
apt  to  be  much  the  same  in  all  ages,  and  a  political  election 
campaign  must  have  had  many  features  in  his  day  which  are 
not  unfamiliar  in  our  own.  There  were  ten  generals  to  be 
elected  annually  to  serve  for  a  year,  and  the  records,  incom- 
plete as  they  are,  suffice  to  show  that  more  often  than  not 
both  parties  carried  seats  on  the  board.  Both  parties,  it  is 
clear,  must  have  selected  their  candidates  with  care  ;  and 
that  party  management  was  very  much  the  same  then  as 
now  is  evident  from  the  occurrence  of  "  deals  "  or  "  saw-offs  " 
of  the  most  modern  kind.^    We  may  therefore  ask  how  Thucy- 

1  Quoted  by  Mr.  Grundy. 

2  Further  discussion  of  this  phrase  of  Simonides  in  Chapter  VI.  p.  167. 

3  Thuc.  V.  26,   I,  erre^icov  8e  8ia.  rravTOS  avTov,  alcrOavoiifvosTe  rfj  fjXiKia  .  .  . 

*  Thuc.  i.  I,  I,  first  sentence.     In  i.  21.  2,  he  notes  that  we  always 
think  the  present  war  the  greatest — -till  it  is  over. 

«  e.g.  the  ostracism  of  Hyperbolus,  Plut.  Nicias,  11  ;  Alcib.  13. 


THUCYDIDES  63 

dides  came  to  be  on  a  "  ticket,"  and  on  which  "  ticket "  he 
was.^  Then  as  now  many  factors  would  contribute  to  a  man's 
selection — distinction  in  war,  gifts  of  speech,  availability. 
In  441  the  poet  Sophocles  was  elected  general  neither  for 
renown  in  battle  nor  political  eloquence,  but  because  in  that 
year  he  had  produced  the  Antigone.^  It  was  not  till  the  days 
of  the  decline  of  Athens  that  the  Greeks  drew  or  felt  the  English 
distinction  between  men  of  genius  and  practical  people,  and 
a  Eubulus  was  preferred  to  Demosthenes.  But  in  425  Cleon 
would  hardly  have  tolerated  a  picturesque  candidate,  and  his 
opponents  could  not  have  afforded  to  risk  one.  In  any  case, 
Thucy dides  was  not  a  poet  of  Panhellenic  fame. 

It  seems  generally  accepted  that  Thucydides  was  a  candi- 
date of  the  Moderates,  the  party  that  preferred  peace,  and,  if 
possible,  some  kind  of  friendly  understanding  with  Sparta. 
A  very  serious  juncture  in  the  fortunes  of  Athens  had  come, 
and  the  election  for  424  was  bound  to  be  of  the  utmost  moment 
— peace  or  war,^  Cleon  was  at  the  height  of  his  power,  the 
successful  leader  of  the  war-party.  In  the  elections  for  425  he 
and  his  had  suffered,  but  the  brilliant  affair  of  Sphacteria  and 
the  arrival  of  the  Spartan  prisoners  in  Athens  within  the 
twenty  days — following  the  failure  of  Nicias'  clever  move 
about  the  generalship — had  altered  everything.  There  would 
be  no  more  talk  of  peace — Spartan  embassies  might  come,  but 
they  could  go  home  with  nothing  done — the  Athenians  "  desired 
more,"  as  the  historian  says,*  and  more  they  got.  Cleon  took 
in  hand  the  matter  of  the  tribute  of  the  allies,  and  doubled 
it.  The  opposition  co-operated  with  the  allies  in  the  matter, 
Antiphon  (Thucydides'  friend)  wrote  speeches  for  the  Lindians 

^  In  these  paragraphs  I  have  followed  the  common  view.  If  the 
question  is  asked,  How  do  we  know  that  Thucydides  was  not  of  Cleon's 
party  to  start  with,  and  that  his  dislike  of  Cleon  is  not  the  outcome  of 
the  exile  that  followed  the  command  at  Amphipolis  ? — ^the  answer  is 
that  for  such  a  view  there  is  no  evidence  at  all ;  it  would  be  pure  guess- 
work. The  reconstruction  given  above  has  admittedly  conjectural 
elements,  but  it  seems  to  fit  in  with  what  we  know. 

2  On  Sophocles  as  general,  see  fragment  of  Ion  (in  Athenaeus,  xiii. 
603E),  who  speaks  of  the  poet  himself,  saying  that  Pericles  had  said 
he  knew  how  to  write  poetry,  but  was  no  strategist. 

^  See  Beloch,  Attische  Politik,  37-42. 

*  Thuc.  iv.  21,  2  ;  an  echo  of  the  phrase  in  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  7, 
when  in  355  b.c.  he  is  arguing  for  Peace  and  against  Empire. 


64  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  the  Samothracians,  and  the  well-to-do  grumbled  as  ever 
yet  at  the  cost  of  war  and  of  democratic  government.  But 
Cleon  had  his  way,  and  to  clinch  his  power  he  raised  the  pay  for 
service  in  the  Ecclesia  from  two  obols  to  three,  Aristophanes 
might  attack  this  in  his  Knights  (424  B.C.),  but  the  extra  obol 
had  attractions  for  poor  voters  in  a  time  of  war  prices. 

The  peace  party  would  need  to  look  well  to  it  if  they  were 
to  make  any  impression  on  the  power  of  Cleon.  Why  they 
should  have  selected  Thucydides,  we  do  not  know — whether  his 
wealth,  or  his  interests  in  Thrace,  or  kinship  with  the  family 
of  Cimon,  decided  it,  or  some  proof  given  of  political  or  military 
gifts,  distinction  won  or  foreshadowed  in  some  campaign,  or 
speech  of  appeal  in  the  Ecclesia — he  does  not  explain.  He 
only  incidentally  records  that  he  was  general  for  the  year  424. 
We  know  also  that  the  party  carried  its  leader,  Nicias,  and  two 
others,  Autocles  and  Nicostratos — four  at  any  rate  out  of  the 
ten. 

It  would  hardly  have  been  human  if  Thucydides  had  not 
felt  some  satisfaction  at  the  election.  But  it  was  to  be  the  ruin 
of  his  career  at  once,  if  in  the  long  run  the  foundation  of  a 
greater  and  more  lasting  fame  than  fell  to  many  a  successful 
strategos.  "  It  befell  me  to  be  in  exile  from  my  country,"  he 
wrote,  "  for  twenty  years  after  the  generalship  at  Amphipolis  " 
(v.  26,  5).  The  story  needs  no  re- telling.  Brasidas  was  too 
quick  for  the  Athenian  general  in  charge  of  the  fleet,  and  the 
city  was  lost.  It  stood  on  the  river  Strymon,  commanding  the 
river-way  into  the  interior  and  the  road  along  the  coast ;  it 
was  a  centre,  too,  from  which  Athens  had  a  part  of  the  timber 
supply  on  which  her  fleet  depended  ^  and  some  part  also  of  her 
revenues.  It  was  for  Athens'  enemies  at  once  a  brilliant 
triumph,  and  a  military,  political,  and  commercial  gain  of  the 
utmost  significance.  It  promised  the  subject  allies  of  Athens 
that  freedom  which  Sparta  had  held  out  to  them  in  432  B.C.  ; 
and  though  she  was  soon  to  abandon  her  promise  quite  ruth- 
lessly, still,  as  long  as  Brasidas  lived,  there  was  no  predicting 
the  outcome. 

So  it  befell  Thucydides  to  be  in  exile.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  how  modern  historians  have  debated  his  case — was  he 
guilty  or  not  guilty  ?     Grote  definitel}?  holds  "  the  positive 

^  Thuc.  iv.  108. 


THUCYDIDES  65 

verdict  of  guilty  fully  merited."  ^  Thirlwall  brings  Thucydides 
in  not  guilty — "  human  prudence  and  activity  could  not  have 
accomplished  more  than  Thucydides  did  under  the  same 
circimistances."  ^  The  Germans,  it  appears,  are  similarly 
divided.  Eduard  Meyer  clears  the  air  with  a  verdict  of  his 
own — "  the  way  in  which  moderns,  quite  in  Cleon's  manner, 
tell  the  ancient  generals  what  they  should  have  done  is  most 
desperately  naive."  ^  The  fact  surely  is  that  we  are  not 
in  possession  of  evidence  enough  to  warrant  any  decision.  It 
may  suffice  to  see  what  Thucydides  says  about  it. 

At  first  ?ight,  it  appears  that  he  says  nothing — neither 
confesses  to  guilt,  nor  offers  defence.  He  does  not  even  say 
who  proposed  the  decree  of  his  exile.  Antiquity  guessed  that 
it  was  Cleon,  which  is  likely  enough,  unless  the  great  man  put 
up  a  follower  to  do  it,  as  sometimes  happened  in  old  days  and 
happens  still.  Hence,  by  a  conclusion,  as  easy  as  the  guess  on 
which  it  rests,  came  the  feeling  which  is  always  present  when 
Thucydides  writes  of  Cleon.*  But  before  we  embark  on  the 
share  of  Cleon  in  the  affair,  for  which  we  have  no  evidence 
at  all,  we  had  better  be  done  with  the  case  of  Thucydides. 
All  that  we  actually  have  to  rest  on  is  a  number  of  judgments 
upon  military  matters,  which  taken  together  suggest  an  ex- 
planation. 

First  of  all,  then,  there  is  the  famous  judgment  upon  Cleon's 
engagement  to  bring  the  Spartans  on  Sphacteria  prisoners 
to  Athens  within  twenty  days.  It  was  "mad" — the  talk 
of  a  madman — fMavicoSrjf;.  So  Thucydides  describes  it  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  Cleon  made  good  his  word.^  "  No 
sentence,"  says  Grote,  "  throughout  the  whole  of  Thucydides 
astonishes  me  so  much."  *  And  yet,  within  fifteen  years  or  so, 
Anytos  sailed  with  a  fleet  to  relieve  Pylos,  the  very  place,  and 
was  held  up  off  Cape  Malea  by  winds,  and  the  Spartans  re-took 
it  (410  B.C.).'  Similarly,  when  Constantinople  fell  to  the  Turks 
in  1453,  a  relieving  fleet  was  at  no  great  distance — at  Tenedos, 
just  outside  the  Dardanelles — and  there  it  stayed,  wind-boimd 
for  weeks.     Landsmen  are  at  a  loss  in  criticizing  the  conduct 

^  Grote,  vi.  191  £f.  2  Thirlwall,  ch.  xxiii. 

3  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  iv.  §  599.  *  Life,  by  Marcellinus,  46. 

*  Thuc.  iv.  39.  8  Grote,  vi.  127. 

'  Diod.  Sic.  xiii.  64  ;  that  at  least  was  the  received  explanation. 
5 


66  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  fleets  and  admirals  ;  they  neither  know  what  a  ship  can  do 
nor  what  it  cannot — and  both  are  surprising.  Who  but  a 
maniac  would  imdertake  to  control  the  winds  round  Cape 
Malea  for  twenty  days  ? 

Again  and  again,  in  the  Speeches,  Thucydides  reiterates 
how  incalculable  a  thing  war  is.  "  Consider,"  say  the 
Athenians  in  the  First  Book,  "  the  vast  influence  of  accident 
in  war.  ...  As  it  continues,  it  generally  becomes  an  affair 
of  chances  "  (i.  78,  i,  2).  "  War  of  all  things,"  say  the  Cor- 
inthians, "  proceeds  least  upon  set  rules  "  (i.  122).  "  Remem- 
ber," says  Nicias  toward  the  end  at  Syracuse,  "  the  accidents 
in  wars,  and  hope  that  chance  may  be  with  us"  (vii.  61,  3). 
So  apparently  thought  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  told 
Creevey  on  the  day  after  Waterloo  that  it  was  "  a  damned 
near-run  thing — the  nearest  thing  he  had  ever  seen."  So 
thought  not  the  Athenians.^  In  424  they  banished  and  fined 
the  generals  who  had  left  Sicily  as  a  result  of  the  congress  of 
Gela — sent  home  by  the  allies  who  had  called  them  in,  and 
wanted  them  now  no  more,  "  So  thoroughly  had  the  present 
prosperity  persuaded  the  citizens  that  nothing  could  withstand 
them,  and  that  they  could  achieve  what  was  possible  and  what 
was  impracticable  alike,  whether  with  ample  equipment  or 
inadequate,  indifferently."  With  these  strong  words  Thucy- 
dides leaves  the  fortunes  of  Eurymedon  and  his  colleagues — 
words  that  students  have  been  quick  to  apply  to  his  own  case.^ 

For  twenty  years  Thucydides  was  in  exile.  It  has  been 
conjectured  that  it  was  not  an  ordinary  form  of  exile,  but  one 
which  compelled  him  to  avoid  all  contact  with  Athenians  for 
fear  of  arrest — a  condemnation  for  treachery — so  completely 
is  he  excluded  from  Athenian  information.^  Even  if  this 
suggestion  goes  too  far,  exile  had  not  for  an  ancient  Greek  the 
alleviations  of  to-day.  He  was  everywhere  uncomfortable, 
everywhere  more  or  less  liable  to  injustice  and  ill-usage — 
Athens  perhaps  excepted.     And  there  was  moreover  within 

1  '•'  A  sharp-witted  but  thoughtless  democracy  "  is  the  happy  phrase 
of  Mr.  Lamb,  Clio  Enthroned,  p.  164. 

2  Thuc.  iv.  65.  Cf.  also  iii.  115,  the  case  of  Laches,  parodied  by 
Aristophanes  in  the  Wasps  ;  and  Plut.  Nicias,  6,  that  of  Paches,  who 
committed  suicide  in  the  court. 

'  Grundy,  Thuc.  p.  35. 


THUCYDIDES  67 

him  a  passion  for  his  native  place  that  would  drive  him  to 
strange  lengths.  Pericles  had  bidden  his  fellow-citizens  be 
lovers  of  Athens — ipaa-ral,  his  term,  is  not  our  quiet  and 
natural  word,  but  a  word  of  passion,  blind,  unreasoning,  and 
wild,  the  passion  of  a  young  man  for  a  woman  ;  and  epw? 
again  is  the  word  Thucydides  uses,  and  Plutarch  after  him, 
to  describe  the  mad  infatuation  that  fell  on  the  Athenians  to 
go  to  Syracuse.  Such  a  passion  for  the  native  land  it  was 
that  induced  Greeks,  not  in  a  single  case,  but  in  many,  to 
inflict  on  their  country  any  wound,  any  disaster,  any  shame, 
if  only  they  might  live  at  home,  and  be  exUes  no  more.  What 
matter  if  instead  of  being  great  the  city  was  small  now,  free 
no  longer,  but  a  vassal  to  Sparta,  or  x4.thens,  or  Persia — the 
exile  was  home  again. ^  It  is  not  to  be  thought  that  Thucy- 
dides would  have  paid  such  a  price  to  live  in  Athens,  but  we 
have  to  realize  how  men  hated  exile  and  longed  for  home,  and 
the  familiar  scene,  with  all  the  associations  of  friendship  and 
childhood,  of  family  grave  and  local  cult — and  safety.  One 
chance  of  return  Thucydides  had,  when  in  411  the  Four 
Hundred  became  masters  of  the  city.  There  was  hope  then 
for  an  exile,  but  "  they  did  not  recall  the  exiles  because  of 
Alcibiades  "  (viii.  70). 

He  seems  to  have  spent  his  years,  at  any  rate  partly,  in 
travel  among  the  scenes  of  action  of  the  war.  Pylos,  modern 
travellers  tell  us,  he  did  not  see  ^ — not  even  Thomas  Arnold's 
geological  changes  will  reconcile  them  to  his  account  of  the 
place  ;  it  is  not  the  work  of  a  man  who  saw  it.  How  should 
he  see  it,  while  his  countrymen  held  it  ?  Plataea  he  never 
saw  either — what  interest  had  it  for  an  Athenian  before  the 
siege,  or  how,  again,  could  he  visit  it  after  the  siege  ?  But  he 
seems  to  have  a  personal  knowledge  of  the  regions  of  Demos- 
thenes' famous  campaign  in  Aetolia,  and  of  the  topography  of 
Syracuse.^     Sparta,  it  appears,  he  visited.     To  Italy  he  hardly 

^  Ille  terrarum  mihi  pvaeter  omnes  angulus  ridet  (Horace,  Odes,  ii. 
6, 13).  Cf.  the  proverb  ckt^t-i  SvXoo-Sjtos  eipyxfopir],  Strabo,  638 ;  Herodotus, 
iii.  149. 

'^  Cf.  Grundy,  Thuc.  p.  25. 

^  Freeman,  Hist,  of  Sicily,  iii.  p.  595  :  --  To  my  mind  the  signs  that 
he  had  gone  over  every  inch  of  the  ground  of  the  Syracusan  siege  are 
beyond  all  gainsaying.  .  .  .  The  oftener  I  read  his  text,  the  oftener  I 
step  out  the  ground,  the  more  thoroughly  do  I  feel  that  the  two  fit 


68  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

went — ^his  use  of  the  name  is  remarked  as  covering  only  a  small 
part  of  the  land,  and  he  confuses  Etruscans  and  Campanians. 
The  outlying  regions  of  the  world  which  Herodotus  travelled 
with  such  delight,  he  let  alone — Egypt,  Asia  Minor,  and  the 
East.  But  his  account  of  Macedon  seems  to  imply  knowledge, 
and  gratitude  has  been  traced  in  the  language  he  uses  of 
Archelaus>     Macedon  was  near  and  not  too  Athenian. 

One  curious  if  doubtful  relic  of  a  residence  at  the  court  of 
Archelaus  survives  in  the  four-lined  stanza,  which  the  ancients 
say  Thucydides  wrote  to  commemorate  Euripides  who  died 
at  that  court,  far  from  his  country,  but  a  voluntary  exile. 

Greece  is  thy  monument,  Euripides, 

In  Macedon  laid,  where  thou  didst  end  thy  days  ; 
Thy  country  Athens,  veriest  Greece  of  Greece  ; 

The  Muse  diy  jt^y,  and  .^verywiiere  thy  praise.^ 

The  utmost  that  we  can  say  about  the  epitaph  is  that  it  is 
ascribed  in  a  number  of  places  to  Thucydides,  though  such 
ascriptions  are  easy  and  tempting  to  certain  types  of  mind. 
That  the  sentiment  of  the  third  line  is  that  of  Thucydides,  we 
need  only  turn  to  the  great  Funeral  Speech  of  Pericles  to  see. 
There  is  no  Greece  but  Athens  after  all.  If  the  rivals  of  Athens 
did  not  admit  this  in  the  historian's  day,  all  Greece  and  all  the 
world  felt  it  in  time. 

Meantime  the  years  of  exile  dragged  on,  not  without  their 
influence  on  Thucydides.  He  wrote,  he  travelled,  he  watched 
men  and  events,^  he  thought,  he  developed  his  gnarled  and 
involved  style  and  pursued  his  inquiries  with  a  deepening 
sense  of  the  value  of  accuracy  and  precision — to  aKpt^e<i — 
in  knowledge  and  in  speech.     His  banishment,  as  he  said, 

into  one  another  in  the  minutest  detail."  Mr.  W.  E.  Heitland  {Journal 
of  Philology,  xxiii.  p.  68)  doubts  whether  Thucydides  ever  visited 
Syracuse — ^this  after  ■'  a  hard  week's  work  on  the  ground  "  in  1883. 
Grundy,  Croiset,  and  others  side  with  Freeman. 

1  Thuc.  ii.  100. 

2  Anth.  Pal.  vii.  45  : 

fivrjfxa  fiev  'EXKas  aTracr    'Evpiiribov'  oaria  S'  'i<T\fi 

yrj  MaiceScov'  §  yap  8e^aTo  repfia  fiioV 
"TTarpls  8'  "EXXaSos  'EXXay  'Adrjvaf  n-XcTora  8e  Movaais 

repyjraSf  ck   itoWcciv  koi  tov  ewaivov  ex^ei, 

3  Lamb,  Clio  Enthroned,  pp.  35-38,  remarks  his  attention  to  trade 
and  its  effects  on  cities  and  civilization. 


THUCYDIDES  69 

threw  him  among  the  Peloponnesians  and  gave  him  a  chance 
to  imderstand  somewhat  more  of  them  in  quiet.i  He  learnt 
and  took  pains  to  write  something  of  their  mihtary  system 
and  its  efficiency. ^  Incidentally  he  rebukes  an  author  whom 
he  does  not  name  for  speaking  of  the  Pitanates  lochos — a 
regiment  with  a  local  name.  Herodotus  ought  to  have  known 
there  was  no  such  thing — "  so  careless  is  the  inquiry  for  truth 
with  many  men,  and  they  are  more  apt  to  turn  to  what  lies 
ready  to  hand."  ^  But  the  Spartans,  as  he  says,  preferred  to 
make  a  secret  of  their  constitution  and  of  all  they  did.^  They 
had  no  ambition,  it  seems,  to  be  "  the  education  of  Greece," 
and  when  foreigners  learnt  too  much  they  put  them  over  the 
frontier.  5 

But  exile  must  have  had  results  of  more  significance  than 
mere  opportunities  of  information.  What  effect  had  it  on 
the  man's  mind,  on  his  whole  nature  ?  Here  we  can  only 
make  guesses,  as  we  have  so  little  knowledge  of  him  before 
he  was  banished.  Yet  a  thoughtful  man,  cut  off  from  all  that 
is  dear  and  famiUar,  does  not  spend  his  days  moving  about 
from  one  strange  scene  to  another  without  penetrating  deeper 
into  the  realities  of  Ufe.  He  gets  outside  the  parish,  outside 
the  island,  beyond  the  conventions,  the  traditions,  and  the 
common  values,  as  year  after  year  he  sees  the  cities  of  many 
men  and  learns  their  mind.  Solitude  drives  him  into 
reflection,  and  intensifies  a  native  severity  of  thought.  He 
comes  back  to  Athens  a  stranger,  a  man  forgotten,  to-  a 
changed  city.     The  native   land   is  never   the   same   after 

1  V.  26, 5.  '  V.  66,  67. 

'  i.  20,  3,  a  chapter  in  which  he  picks  out  three  famous  errors — the 
Athenian  tyrannicides  and  the  Spartan  king's  two  votes  being  the 
other  subjects  of  his  criticism.  Ovtcos  dTdkaiirapos — the  phrase  has  often 
come  to  my  mind  as  I  have  Hstened  to  talk  about  the  great  European 
War. 

*  V.  68. 

« I  cannot  help  wondering  also  whether  Thucydides  had  any  contact 
with  Alcibiades  during  the  years  they  were  both  in  exile  ;  note  how  he 
knows  what  Alcibiades  did  in  Sparta,  and  who  were  his  friends  and  his 
enemies  there,  and  how  he  advised  Endios,  vi.  88-93  ;  vii.  18  ;  viii. 
6,  12  ;  in  and  about  Asia,  viii.  14-17,  26  ;  at  the  court  of  Tissaphernes, 
and  what  advice  he  gave  him,  viii.  45,  46,  52,  56,  82  ;  and  the  sentence 
in  viii.  70,  recording  that  the  exiles  were  not  recalled  -'  because  of 
Alcibiades." 


70  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

years  abroad.  Caesar  came  back  to  Rome  after  eight  years 
in  Gaul  a  new  man,  free  as  he  had  not  been  before,  in  virtue  of 
new  thoughts  and  new  experiences,  with  a  quicker  and  surer 
instinct  to  base  himself  on  the  real  and  the  ultimate.  Why 
has  Thucydides  so  very  little  to  say  of  Athenian  politics  ?  Of 
Cleon  he  speaks,  but  Hyperbolus  —  a  sentence  suffices  to 
chronicle  the  death  of  the  wretched  creature  {ixoxdrjphv 
dvOpcoTTov),  as  if  in  life  he  did  not  count,  but  his  death  were  a 
sign  of  the  times,  a  manifesto,  to  be  noted ;  ^  and  yet  the 
vigour  with  which  Aristophanes  attacks  Hyperbolus  suggests 
that  the  poet  thought  he  mattered.  Did  the  ebb  and  flow, 
the  storms  and  passions,  of  party  life  in  Athens  matter — any 
of  it,  all  of  it  ?  Once  he  had  been  in  the  thick  of  it — chosen 
to  be  on  a  "  ticket ' ' — ^but  how  little  it  all  meant !  When  policies 
have  to  be  discussed  in  the  History,  it  is  "  the  Athenians  " 
who  do  this  or  that,  who  "  speak  as  follows."  ^  But  in  each  case 
there  was  a  meeting  of  the  ecclesia,  a  debate,  points  made, 
advantages  scored,  a  vote  taken,  a  policy  carried  and  a  policy 
lost,  reputations  risen  and  fallen.  Was  there  ?  How  little  it 
signifies  after  ten,  fifteen,  twenty  years  of  absence  !  Strange 
thoughts  grow 

About  the  life  before  I  lived  this  life. 

What  a  contrast  between  the  living  pictures  Aristophanes 
gives  of  it,  and  the  indifference  of  Thucydides  !  "  All  is  done 
well,"  says  the  king  leaving  Troy,  in  Euripides'  play, 

e'l  Ti  ra)v8'  e;(ei  koXSis — 

"  if  ought  of  it  all  is  well."  After  all,  what  happens  in  the 
assembly  or  anywhere  else  only  matters  as  it  takes  one  into 
the  human  mind  ;  and  exile  gives  leisure  to  track  out  some  of 
what  Dr.  Johnson  called  the  mind's  anfractuosities. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  often  true  that  a  man  never  knows 
his  country  and  his  people  till  he  sees  them  from  without  as 
well  as  from  within,  from  a  distance  as  well  as  at  close  quarters 
— till  he  is  so  detached  in  life  and  thought  that  his  heart  will 
not  confuse  his  head.    What  did  Athens  mean  ?     Let  a  man 

^  Thuc.  viii.  73,  3  ;  a  passage  which  suggests  personal  contempt. 

2  Dionysius,  de  Thuc.  14,  15,  §  842,  cannot  make  out  the  principle 
on  which  Thucydides  elects  to  give  a  speech  on  one  occasion  and  not 
on  another. 


THUCYDIDES  71 

try  the  brawling  sensual  democracy  of  Syracuse — or  Sparta 
and  its  machine-made  life — or  Macedon,  where  a  brilliant 
usurper  is  forcing  civilization  on  clans  and  cantons — or  Thra<<  ■ 
among  the  gold  mines,  even  if  they  are  his  own.  What  would 
anybody — any  man  of  years  and  mind — ^want  '^o  live  in 
Thessaly  for  ?  asks  Socrates  in  the  Crito.'^  No,  Athens  after  all, 
deduct  what  you  like,  what  you  must,  it  is  the  place  ;  and 
we  shall  see  why  in  a  little. 

At  last  the  long  war  was  over — as  significant  in  its  issues  as 
Thucydides  had  divined  from  the  beginning  that  it  would  be — 
a  disaster  for  all  Greece  in  its  long  course,  for  "  war  takes  away 
the  easy  supply  of  daily  wants  and  is  a  violent  te'acher  "  ^ — 
a  manifold  disaster  in  its  outcome.  Athenian  democracy  was 
overthrown, '  and  the  tyranny  of  the  Thirty  took  its  place. 
The  exiles  returned — no  modern  Englishman  can  readily  feel 
what  that  sentence  implies. ^  Pausanias  long  after  tells  us 
that  there  was  a  vote  for  the  recall  of  Thucydides  proposed  by 
a  man  Oenobios,  but  he  adds  that  he  (apparently  Thucydides) 
"  was  murdered  on  his  way  back,  and  there  is  a  monument  to 
him  not  far  from  the  Melitid  gate."  *  There  is  confusion  here, 
since  it  is  evident  that  Thucydides  lived  to  see  his  country 
again — saw  it  in  its  humiliation,  stripped  of  the  great  walls,  for 
he  proves  a  point  as  to  their  swift  building  in  Themistocles' 
times,  from  their  foundations  "  of  all  sorts  of  stones,"  visible 
to-day — stelae  from  graves,  stones  wrought  and  unwrought, 
such  as  chanced  to  be  handy. ^  A  strange  picture — the  old 
exile  home  again  going  to  the  razed  walls  to  test  the  accuracy 
of  a  point  in  history. 

He  lived  a  few  more  years,  busied  as  for  so  long  with  his 
History,  and  writing  now,  as  some  critics  acutely  suggest, 
some   of    its    most    impressive    parts.     From   certain   small 

^  Plato,  Crito,  53D-54A. 

^  Thuc.  iii.  82,  2.  Professor  Cramb,  in  his  Germany  and  England, 
renders  or  paraphrases  /3t aio?  hMa-Kokos  as  *'  stern  discipHnarian."  If 
this  is  right,  we  shall  have  to  revise  our  view  of  the  historian's  opinion 
of  Cleon  ;  ^laioraros  rav  irokirmv  (iii.  36)  has  not  hitherto  been  con- 
sidered praise.  On  the  advantage  of  wealth  as  contributing  to  morals, 
see  old  Cephalos  in  Plato,  Rep.  i.  33 ib. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  23,  and  ii.  3,  15,  Critias  irpoireTr^s  rjv  eVt  to 
ttoXKovs  aiTOKTeiveiv,  are  kcli  (pvyav  vtto  rot)  Brjixov. 

*  Pausanias,  i.  23,  11.  ^  Thuc.  i.  93. 


72  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

indications,^  mostly  silences,  it  is  held  that  his  death  probably 
fell  in  or  about  the  year  399 — where,  we  cannot  guess.  The 
ancient  story  as  to  his  being  murdered,  with  its  variants  as  to 
place,  may  rest  merely  on  the  fact  of  his  work  being  unfinished 
— or  it  may  be  true  ;  there  is  no  telling.  Marcellinus  states 
that  some  said  the  Eighth  Book  "  was  a  bastard,"  either  from 
his  daughter's  hand  or  Xenophon's,  but "  it  was  not  in  feminine 
nature  to  imitate  such  gifts  and  such  skill,"  and  the  book 
"  all  but  shouts  "  {fiovov  ov^xi  ^oa)  that  Thucydides  wrote  it, 
though  some  more  exquisite  critics  (rot?  x^pL€a-T6poL<i)  think 
that  he  only  roughed  it  out  and  did  not  give  it  the  finish 
that  he  would  have  wished. ^  In  any  case,  the  life  was  over 
before  the  work  was  done,  for  it  is  clear  that  his  purpose  was 
to  tell  the  story  of  the  whole  war. 

We  have  now  to  turn  to  the  man's  life-work,  and,  without 
analysing  it  or  pausing  to  discuss  it  in  any  detail,  to  use  it  to 
learn  something  of  the  man  himself ;  and  we  may  begin  with 
the  Athenian  and  his  people. 

As  we  saw  before,  Thucydides  is  Athenian  through  and 
through — in  education,  in  spirit,  in  feeling,  in  heart,  whatever 
detachment  years  and  loneliness  and  exile  may  have  given  him. 
But  to  be  Athenian  did  not  connote  approval  of  all  that 
Athenians  were  and  did.  The  gift  of  self-criticism  was  not 
denied  to  the  most  gifted  people  of  antiquity,  and  the  worst 
that  we  know  of  Athens  comes,  like  the  best,  from  her  sons — 
a  fact  that  perplexed  simple  natures  in  a  less  complicated  age 
of  Greece.  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus — "  ce  bon  Denys 
d'Halicarnasse,"  as  Boissier  called  him — is  quite  definite  on 
this  point  and  one  or  two  others. 

A  historian's  first  task,  his  chief  task,  says  Dionysius,^  is 
to  choose  a  theme  noble  and  acceptable  to  those  who  shall 
read  it ;    but  Thucydides  writes  of  a  war  neither  noble  nor 

1  Some  of  them  are  very  trifling.  Most  people  would  hardly  find, 
or  feel,  any  reference  to  the  trial  of  Socrates  in  the  statement  as  to 
Antiphon's  defence,  viii.  68,  2.     This  was  a  suggestion  of  Classen, 

2  Some  modern  critics  have  the  same  view ;  they  consider  the  absence 
of  speeches  a  sign  of  interrupted  work.  The  last  broken  sentence  may 
either  be  evidence  of  an  abrupt  end  of  his  labours,  or  of  an  accident  to 
his  MS. 

^  Letter  to  Pompeius,  ch.  3,  pp.  767-76^.  77^.  Contrast  Lucian, 
Quomodo  Historia,  38,  51, 


THUCYDIDES  73 

fortunate,  a  war  that  had  better  never  have  happened  at  all, 
or  at  least  would  be  better  forgotten.  He  made  his  beginning 
at  the  very  moment  when  things  began  to  go  ill  with  the 
Greek  world  ;  which,  as  a  Greek  and  an  Athenian,  he  ought 
not  to  have  done — a  man  too  of  the  first  rank,  whom  the 
Athenians  had  honoured  with  the  generalship  and  other 
things  ;  and  he  did  it  with  such  obvious  malice,  that  though 
he  might  have  found  causes  elsewhere,  he  attached  the  blame 
for  the  war  to  his  own  city.  His  disposition  was  stubborn 
and  bitter,  and  he  had  a  grudge  against  his  country,  because 
of  his  exile.  He  emphasizes  her  failures  with  great  precision 
— here  the  critic  uses  the  historian's  own  adverb,  koX  fidXa 
aKpt/3m — and  what  went  to  her  mind,  he  either  does  not 
mention  at  all  or  as  if  by  constraint. 

So  wrote  Dionysius,  himself  a  historian  in  many  books  ; 
but,  as  with  Plutarch,  so  in  his  case  we  have  to  note  that 
Greek  subjects  of  the  Roman  Empire  lacked  something  needful 
for  the  intelligence  of  Greeks  of  more  spacious  days.  Still  he 
raises  some  questions,  and  to  solve  them  we  must  go  to 
Thucydides  himself.  How  did  he  feel  toward  his  people  and 
their  government  and  their  ideals  in  the  long  run  ? 

Nicias,  as  we  have  seen,  was  his  party  leader — curious 
as  it  is  to  write  it — and -it  was  on  the  "  ticket  "  of  Nicias  that 
he  was  elected  general.  For  Cleon  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  he  had  a  great  dislike  or  distaste.  We  need  not  say  with 
the  ancients  that  it  was  because  Cleon  got  him  banished  ; 
the  man,  with  his  maniacal  brags,  with  his  reckless,  headlong 
violence  in  speech,  in  policy,  and  in  fight,  was  antipathetic — 
and  so  was  the  whole  school  of  them,  the  "  dynasty  of  dealers," 
as  Aristophanes  called  them — the  men  who  would  have  war 
at  any  price,  who  refused  again  and  again  to  have  peace  when 
it  could  have  been  had  with  triumph  and  empire,  and  yet 
again  when  it  was  needed  to  heal  the  country  and  could  still 
have  been  had  with  honour,  and  finally  when  no  sane  man 
could  have  dreamed  there  was  any  other  hope  even  of  a 
national  existence.  Quite  apart  from  the  vulgarity  of  mind 
that  the  dynasty  of  dealers  showed,  clever  leaders  and  able 
financiers  as  some  of  them  undoubtedly  were,  they  never 
realized  the  actual  world  in  which  they  lived.  It  is  a  fine 
stroke  when  Thucydides  sets  in  Cleon's  mouth  the  complaint 


74  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

against  idealogues,  as  Napoleon  called  them,  men,  who,  in 
Cleon's  phrase,  "  seek  something  else,  so  to  speak,  than  the 
conditions  under  which  we  live."  ^  What  else  did  all  the 
Cleons  and  Cleophons  do — living  on  hopes  and  teaching  their 
fellow-citizens  to  count  everything  possible  "  whether  feasible 
or  impracticable,  with  proper  outfit  or  deficient,  indifferently  "  ? 
Many  views  have  been  held  about  Thucydides'  own  political 
leanings.  Some  have  put  together  his  supposed  connexion 
with  the  house  of  Cimon  and  the  great  picture  that  he  draws 
of  Pericles,  and  have  deduced  a  change  of  camp — the  colossal 
genius  of  Pericles  detached  him  from  his  hereditary  loyalties. 
There  is  no  one  who  has  given  a  more  brilliant  presentment  of 
all  that  we  associate  with  Pericles,  and  yet  as  we  pass  on 
from  his  speeches  to  Cleon's  we  find  phrases  we  have  met 
before — strange  assonances  and  echoes  of  Pericles  himself. 
How  do  they  come  there  ?  Did  Cleon  quote  Pericles  when 
he  addressed  the  Assembly  ?  He  had  been  Pericles'  opponent 
on  the  extreme  Left,  out-demagoguing  him  as  a  clever  extremist, 
not  yet  entrusted  with  responsibility,  so  easily  may.  He 
might  very  well  have  borrowed  his  language  in  later  days — 
and  how  curious  that  it  should  be  so  !  Much  has  been  said 
of  Thucydidean  irony,  but  "  irony  "  is  a  doubtful  word  at 
best ;  it  tells  us  too  much  or  too  little.  But  if  ever  a  historical 
work  was  wrought  all  over,  till  every  hint  of  assonance  or 
turn  of  phrase  seems  to  the  reader  to  be  meant,  to  be  deliberate 
and  conscious,  it  is  Thucydides'  History,  above  all  in  its 
speeches.  How  curious  then  that  Cleon  slips  so  naturally 
into  the  language  of  his  great  predecessor  for  all  the  contrasts 
patent  between  them  !  Is  Cleon  the  heir  of  Pericles — heir  to 
his  policy  and  to  his  language  ?  Is  the  massacre  of  the 
Mitylenaeans  the  natural  outcome  of  the  magnificence,  im- 
perial and  Panhellenic,  of  Pericles  ?  In  Athens,  it  is  the 
boast  of  Pericles,  life  is  more  human,  more  neighbourly, 
kinder,  richer,  than  elsewhere.  "  Do  not  be  misled,"  shouted 
Cleon,  slapping  his  thigh,^  "  by  those  three  things  most 
hostile  to  an  empire — by  pity,  by  beautiful  language,  by 
sweet  reasonableness."  ^     They  stand  very  far  apart ;    and 

1  Thuc.  iii.  38,  7.  ^  Plut.  Nicias,  8. 

'  Thuc.  iii.  40,  2 — imeUeia  is  the  word ;    I  give  Matthew  Arnold's 
rendering  of  it,  in  another  connexion. 


THUCYDIDES  75 

yet    they   stand    together — "  You   hold    your   empire   as   a 
tyranny." 

Thucydides  nowhere  says  that  he  is  opposed  to  the  Athenian 
Empire — ^he  very  rarely  expresses  any  moral  judgment,  so 
rarely  that  some  critics  hold  to-day  that  he  never  made  any  ; 
but  it  is  impossible  to  read  Cleon  on  Mitylene,  or  to  follow 
the  discussion  between  the  Athenian  and  the  Melian  delegates, 
without  a  surge  of  feeling  within  oneself.  Is  it  conceivable 
that  a  man  could  write  them  stony-hearted  as  some  critics 
suggest  ?     It  is  not  thinkable. 

"  As  for  the  gods,  we  expect  to  have  quite  as  much  of 
their  favour  as  you,"  say  the  Athenians  ;  "  for  we  are  not 
doing  or  claiming  anything  which  goes  beyond  common 
opinion  about  divine  or  men's  desires  about  human  things. 
For  of  the  gods  we  believe,  and  of  men  we  know,  that  by  a 
law  of  their  nature  wherever  they  can  rule  they  will.  This 
law  was  not  made  by  us,  and  we  are  not  the  first  who  have 
acted  upon  it ;  we  did  but  inherit  it,  and  shall  bequeath  it 
to  all  time,  and  we  know  that  you  and  all  mankind,  if  you 
were  as  strong  as  we  are,  would  do  as  we  do.  So  much  for 
the  gods  ;  we  have  told  you  why  we  expect  to  stand  as  high 
in  their  good  opinion  as  you."  ^ 

There  are  points  here  which  must  be  reserved  for  a,  later 
moment,  but  for  the  present  we  may  remark  that  no  access 
to  the  cynicism  of  the  speaker  seems  possible.  Whether  he 
actually  said  so  much,  or  whether  Thucydides  interpreted  him 
so,  he  represented  the  temper  of  the  imperial  people.  "  The 
place  was  closely  invested,  and  there  was  treachery  among  the 
citizens  themselves.  So  the  Melians  were  induced  to  surrender 
at  discretion.  The  Athenians  thereupon  put  to  death  all  who 
were  of  military  age,  and  made  slaves  of  the  women  and 
children.  They  then  colonized  the  island,  sending  thither  five 
hundred  settlers  of  their  own."  And  in  the  next  sentences 
we  learn  that  the  Athenians,  after  conquering  Melos,  conceived 
the  hope  and  the  desire  of  conquering  Sicily  ;  and  the  story 
moves  on  to  the  Sicilian  expedition. 

It  is  remarked  that  Thucydides  offers  no  comment  on  the 
right  or  wrong  of  such  an  action,  nor  again  in  the  earher 
passage  where  the  Plataeans  plead  for  Ufe  before  the  stony- 
^  Thuc.  V.  105  (Jowett's  translation). 


76  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

faced  Spartans  who  will  put  them  to  death  whatever  they  say. 
The  Spartans  of  course  made  no  speech  about  it.  It  is  the 
way  men  act  and  have  acted  from  before  Agamemnon  down 
to  our  own  day.  God,  hope,  humanity,  right  and  wrong — 
all  irrelevant ;  Odysseus  acted  so  in  Euripides'  play  ^  and 
had  no  bad  end.  Callicles  talks  so  in  the  Gorgias  and  talks 
sense,  for  Socrates  did  come  to  the  hemlock.  Diodotus, 
whoever  he  was,  who  makes  the  speech  against  Cleon's  demand 
to  treat  the  Mitylenaeans  in  the  same  way,  drags  in  neither 
gods  nor  justice  ;  the  argument  for  mercy  to  beaten  subjects 
or  victims  is  expediency. 

On  the  other  side  we  have  one  or  two  things  to  set.  When 
the  Thracians,  the  neighbours  of  the  historian,  dashed  into 
Mycalessos,  "  they  cut  down  all  whom  they  met — women, 
children,  beasts  of  burden,  every  living  thing  they  saw.  For 
the  Thracians,  when  they  dare,  can  be  as  bloody  as  the  worst 
barbarians.  There  in  Mycalessos  .  .  .  they  even  fell  upon 
a  boys'  school,  the  largest  in  the  place,  which  the  children  had 
just  entered,  and  massacred  them  every  one.  .  .  .  Considering 
the  size  of  the  city,  no  calamity  more  deplorable  occurred 
during  the  war."  2  After  all  it  was  not  very  unhke  Melos, 
but  for  the  suddenness.  This  is  perhaps  the  nearest  the 
historian  comes  to  a  judgment  on  any  such  acts,  unless  the 
description  of  stasis  at  Corcyra  contain  some  more  personal 
feeling.  Yet  it  is  not  merely  that  a  modem  reader  feels  some- 
how that  a  great  historian  cannot  be  quite  callous  ;  there  is 
surely  evidence  as  to  his  own  mind  in  the  pleas  of  the  victims. 
A  man  who  really  had  no  moral  feeUng  about  the  methods  of 
Athenian  imperialism  could  never  have  produced  such  effects 
upon  the  human  spirit — ^he  would  not  have  lingered  over 
such  matters,  he  would  have  taken  them  as  a  matter  of 
course,  he  would  not  have  called  attention  to  them  and 
brought  out  their  hatefulness.^  Ancient  critics  understood 
him  better  than  some  of  us  to-day ;  they  recognized  his 
extraordinary  powers  of  pathos,  his  gift  for  appeal  to  feeling, 
and,  if  Dionysius'  notion  that  he  wished  to  rouse  ill-will  against 

^  See  Chapter  V.  p.  159.  2  xhuc.  vii.  29,  30. 

'See  Girard,  Thucydide,  pp.  234-238  :  "L'idee  du  droit  se  degage 
toute  seule  du  spectacle  des  faits,  de  la  lutte  des  passions  qui  les  pro- 
duisent,  des  debats  contradictoires  auxquels  ils  donnent  lieu." 


THUCYDIDES  ^^ 

his  country,  to  vent  malice  on  her,  is  absurd,  it  still  bears  witness 
to  the  fact  that  Thucydides  does  bring  out  the  hateful  wrong 
that  Athens  did  to  mankind  for  the  sake  of  empire.  That 
he  does  it  with  a  wonderful  reserve  is  a  matter  to  which  we 
must  return. 

Meanwhile  Thucydides  makes  it  clear  to  those  who  can 
feel — not  of  course  to  others,  for  there  is  no  evidence  that  he 
looked  for  a  Thracian  public — that  he  did  not  approve  of  the 
imperialism  of  Cleon  and  Alcibiades — nor  of  Pericles,  after  all. 
Yet  he  shows  fairly  enough  how  the  empire  itself  arose  out  of 
service  done.  The  "  Athenians "  who  happened  to  be  at 
Sparta  tell  the  story  of  how  the  Spartans  refused  to  lead 
Greece  against  Persia,  and  "  out  of  the  work  itself  we  were 
compelled "  ^  to  take  the  vacant  leadership.  That  is  true, 
and  it  was  necessary,  as  history  shows  by  the  time  we  reach 
Antalkidas.  The  same  language  is  held  by  Euphemos  at 
Camarina,^  but  he  has  a  tinge  of  a  later  day,  which  suggests 
that  the  Imperialism  of  416  was  not  quite  the  national 
patriotism  of  479. 

So  much  for  Imperial  Democracy  abroad,  and  we  have 
seen  that  he  does  not  admire  its  leaders  at  home.  That  from 
time  to  time  he  drops  such  a  phrase  as  this — "  as  a  crowd 
will"  ^ — proves  Httle.  Even  the  most  convinced  Democrats 
recognize  that  a  sovereign  people  can  make  mistakes,  and 
bad  ones.  Herodotus  *  and  Abraham  Lincoln  agree  that 
"  you  can  fool  all  the  people  some  of  the  time."  If  we  are  to 
talk  of  ideal  constitutions  or  governments  in  a  world,  where 
they  seem  never  to  have  existed  or  never  to  have  been  re- 
cognized by  those  who  lived  under  them,  and  to  ask  what  was 
the  historian's  ideal,  Thucydides  makes  it  plain  that  he  did 
not  admire  tyranny  or  monarchy — the  tyrants  were  small  in 
outlook  and  kept  Greece  paralysed  ;  ^  and  his  description  of  the 
oligarchy  of  the  Four  Hundred  in  Athens  brings  out  forcibly 
how  oppressive  and  how  impossible  it  was.     It  succeeded  just 

1  Thuc.  i.  75,  3.  2  Thuc.  vi.  82,  Z^. 

^  e.g.  in  the  case  of  Pericles,  ii.  65,  14  ;  cf.  iv.  28,  3  ;  vi.  63,  2  ; 
viii.  I,  4.  See  the  very  interesting  and  suggestive  section  in  Lamb, 
Clio  Enthroned,,  ch.  iii.  §  3. 

*  Herodotus,  v.  97,  -noKKovs  yap  oi(ce  elvai  evTrerecTTepov  dia^oKKeiv  fj  eva. 

^  Thuc.  i.  17. 


78  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

so  long  as  nobody  quite  knew  what  it  was,  or  whether  he  was 
safe  with  his  neighbour  ;  but  it  fell  as  soon  as  men  saw  it  would 
use  the  sword  on  the  citizens  and  make  surrender  to  the  nation's 
enemy.  No,  democracy  was  the  only  stable  government  that 
Athens  could  have. 

All  the  same — we  may  call  it  doctrinaire  or  pedantic — he 
shows  a  weakness  for  a  moderate  democracy,  which  is  interest- 
ing. Mr.  R.  A.  Neil  has  discussed  the  political  use  in  Greece 
of  moral  terms. ^  ^w^pwv  is  one  of  them,  with  the  verb 
and  the  noun  derived  from  it.  "  Moral  sense  in  politics  " 
marked  Sparta  and  Chios,  and  prosperity  along  with  it.^ 
Pindar  in  a  more  lyric  way  had  said  the  same  of  Corinth  two 
generations  before — "  There  abides  the  spirit  of  law  (Evvofjuia) 
and  her  sister,  Justice,  sure  foundation  of  cities,  and  Peace, 
one  at  heart  with  them,  stewards  of  wealth  for  men,  golden 
daughters  of  Themis  of  good  counsel."  ^  The  poet  meant 
oligarchy  more  or  less.  The  historian  describes  the  move- 
ment in  Athens,  out  of  which  "^the  Four  Hundred  came,  as 
one  toward  "  good  order  "  [evTaKrelv) ;  and,  later  on,  in  a 
terribly  involved  sentence,  which  Dionysius  picked  out  as  an 
example  of  his  tricks  with  grammar,^  he  tells  us  that  once  the 
subject  cities  received  "  moral  sense  "  and  freedom  of  action 
— i.e.  had  oligarchies  set  up  in  them  by  Pisander — they  pre- 
ferred "  straight  freedom "  [rriv  dvriKpv^;  eXevdeplav)  to  the 
"  skin-deep  good  order  "  of  Athens  (t?}?  airo  roiv  'AOrjvatcov 
vTTovXov  evvofjbia^  ^).  However,  oligarchy  was  not  to  be  in 
Athens,  and  recourse  was  had  to  another  scheme,  something 
in  the  direction  or  after  the  style  of  the  Five  Thousand  who 
had  so  far  existed  in  talk  only.  What  exactly  this  constitu- 
tion was,  he  does  not  say,  but  he  does  say  that  "  during  its 
early  days  it  was  the  best  constitution  which  the  Athenians 
ever  enjoyed  within  my  memory.  Oligarchy  and  Democracy 
were  duly  attempered.  And  thus  after  the  miserable  state 
into  which  she  had  fallen,  the  city  was  again  able  to  raise 

1  Appendix  to  his  edition  of  the  Knights. 

2  Thuc.  viii.  24,  4.  *  Pindar,  Olympian,  13,  i-io. 

*  Dionysius,  Letter  to  Ammaeus,  p.  800:  evvofilas,  he  says,  would 
in  an  ordinary  author  have  been  accusative.  The  MSS. ,  Jowett  says, 
read  ai'Tovofxias,  and  he  suggests  Dionysius  may  have  made  a  shp  of 
memory,  which  does  not  seem  probable. 

5  Thuc.  viii.  64,  5. 


THUCYDIDES  79 

her  head."  ^  Whatever  it  was,  this  "constitution  of  Thera- 
menes  ' '  did  not  last  beyond  a  few  months.  It  is  only  interesting 
in  two  ways — first,  that  it  could  not  maintain  itself  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  real  Democracy,  and  secondly,  that  even  so  it  won 
the  praise  of  Thucydides  who  in  this  marked  way  prefers  it 
to  the  rule  of  Pericles  himself — though  perhaps  he  would  add, 
if  we  could  ask  him,  that  he  only  meant  that  it  was  preferable 
on  paper.  He  would  hardly  "  seek  something  different,  so 
to  say,  from  the  conditions  under  which  we  live  "  ;  but  perhaps 
there  is  a  streak  of  the  doctrinaire  in  every  reflective  student 
of  politics,  especially  in  those  who  are  not  actually  engaged 
in  them.  Real  constitutions  are  never  quite  ideal ;  like  our 
clothes  they  keep  wearing  out,  and  wear  out  unevenly,  and  it 
is  best  for  a  people  when  its  constitution  will  admit  of  half- 
conscious  adjustment,  instinctive  accommodation  to  new 
circumstances,  when  it  is  something  like  that  flux  which 
Heraclitus  saw  in  all  human  and  other  affairs. 

But  constitutions,  actual  or  projected,  do  not  sum  up  the 
life  of  a  people,  and  it  was  not  because  of  a  constitution  that 
Thucydides  was  interested  in  Athens.  We  may  waive — 
though  we  ought  not  to  forget — the  natural  human  ties  of 
home,  and  friendship,  and  association.  The  Athenian  character 
interested  the  Athenian  citizen — it  was  so  quick,  so  penetrative, 
so  engaging,  so  full  of  life  and  fire  and  imagination.  The 
Corinthian  speaker  addressing  the  Spartans  contrasts  the  two 
national  temperaments  :  they  are  quick  to  conceive  the  plan 
and  quick  to  carry  it  out — you  originate  nothing  ;  they  will 
take  risks  of  the  most  reckless  (yes,  but,  says  Pericles  elsewhere, 
they  calculate  those  risks  in  cold  blood  and  then  face  them 
light-heartedly) — you  are  strong,  but  act  feebly  ;  they  are 
impetuous — you  dilatory  ;  they  are  always  abroad,  and  you 
for  ever  at  home  ;  in  a  word,  they  were  born  neither  to  have 
peace  themselves,  nor  to  allow  other  men  to  have  it  either.^ 
The  pair  of  portraits  is  admirable — better  than  any  Corinthian 
ever  offered  to,  Peloponnesian  allies  at  Sparta. 

The  other  side  is  given  in  a  speech  made  by  an  Athenian 

at  Athens.     "  We  forget  that  a  state  in  which  the  laws,  though 

imperfect,  are  unalterable,  is  better  off  than  one  in  wjiich  the 

laws  are  good  but  powerless.     Dulness  and  modesty  {dfiaOca 

1  Thuc.  viii.  97.  2  xhuc.  i.  70. 


8o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

ixerh  <ra)(f)poavvr]<;)  are  a  more  useful  combination  than 
cleverness  and  licence  ;  and  the  more  simple  sort  generally 
make  better  citizens  than  the  more  acute  {^vveTmripov*;),  for 
the  latter  desire  to  be  thought  wiser  than  the  laws  .  .  .  and 
their  folly  generally  ends  in  the  ruin  of  their  country.  ...  In 
such  rhetorical  contests  the  city  gives  away  the  prizes  to  others 
while  she  takes  the  risk  upon  herself.  .  .  .  You  go  to  a  discussion 
as  spectators,  and  take  your  facts  on  hearsay — the  easiest 
dupes  of  new-fangled  arguments,  the  slaves  of  every  new 
paradox,  you  despise  what  is  familiar."  ^  The  speaker  really 
has  a  good  case,  and  he  gets  a  lot  of  support.  King  Archidamus 
in  the  same  vein  sounds  the  praise  of  Sparta,  "  because  we 
are  not  so  highly  educated  as  to  have  learnt  to  despise  the 
laws."  ^  Aristophanes  later  on  makes  Aeschylus  complain 
in  The  Frogs  of  the  effect  of  this  Athenian  habit  of  mind,  whose 
high  priest  was  Euripides  : 

The  disorder  has  spread  to  the  fleet  and  the  crew  ; 

The  service  is  ruined  and  ruined  by  you — 

With  prate  and  debate  in  a  mutinous  state  ; 

Whereas  in  my  day  'twas  a  different  way  ; 

Nothing  they  said  and  knew  nothing  to  say, 

But  to  call  for  their  porridge,  and  cry,  "  Pull  away."  * 

What  Plato  has  to  say  of  "  the  democratic  man  "  we  shall  see 
later  on.*  The  same  thought  reappears  for  ever,  J.  A.  Froude 
in  our  own  day  has  it.  "  John  Mill  called  English  Conserva- 
tives the  stupid  party.  Well,  stupidity  in  its  place  is  not 
always  a  bad  thing.  I  have  a  high  respect  for  Conserva- 
tism.^ .  .  .  Out  of  every  hundred  new  ideas  ninety-nine  are 
generally  nonsense."  ^  So  Cleon  has  after  all  a  good  many 
highly  respectable  people  to  support  the  ideas,  from  which  he 
proceeds  to  plead  for  the  massacre  of  the  Mitylenaeans. 

But  what  does  Thucydides  mean  by  it  all  ?  In  the  Funeral 
Speech,  which  Pericles  delivers  over  those  fallen  in  the  first 
year  of  the  war,  there  is  a  glowing  eulogy  of  Athenian  character 
and  of  that  essential  freedom  of  all  Athenian  ways  which  gives 
the  individual  an  unexampled  charter  to  think,  to  speak,  and 

1  Thuc.  iii.  37,  38,  with  some  omissions  and  compressions. 

2  Thuc.  i.  84.  ^  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  1070  (Frere). 
*  See  Chapter  IX.  p.  298.  ^  'Aixadia  nera  o-a^poo-vvj^s,  no  doubt. 
"  Erasmus,  lect.  viii.  p.  147. 


THUCYDIDES      °  8i 

to  act  as  his  own  inmost  nature  prompts,  and  as  the  world  in 
its  variety  and  its  wonder  calls.  "  We  have  a  peculiar  power 
of  thinking  before  we  act,  and  of  acting  too,  whereas  other  men 
are  courageous  from  ignorance,  but  hesitate  upon  reflection.^  .  .  . 
To  sum  up,  I  say  that  Athens  is  the  education  of  Greece,  and 
that  the  individual  Athenian  in  his  own  person  seems  to  have 
the  power  of  adapting  himself  to  the  most  varied  forms  of 
action  with  the  utmost  versatility  and  grace."  ^  Once  again, 
there  is  a  certain  dim  correspondence  between  the  utterances 
of  Pericles  and  Cleon  ;  they  are  describing  the  same  tempera- 
ment. The  strength  and  the  weakness  of  a  human  character 
spring  in  general  from  the  same  root.  The  Athenian  had  in 
truth  the  gifts  and  graces  that  Pericles  extols,  and  was  in  conse- 
quence exposed  to  the  criticism  of  Cleon,  just  as  the  artistic 
temperament  with  all  its  charm  and  insight  is,  in  our  common 
experience,  a  fatal  endowment  unless  it  is  reinforced  with  the 
shopkeeper  virtues  of  ordinary  sense  and  industry  and  punctu- 
ality— virtues  which,  by  the  way,  the  Athenian  never  credited 
to  shopkeeper  or  tradesman.  Mr.  Zimmem  speaks  of  Thucy- 
dides'  "  usual  gentle  irony  playing  round  the  confident  sentences 
in  which  Pericles  glorifies  the  Athenian  amateur."  ^  That  same 
irony  surely  played  round  the  speech  of  Cleon — what  a  censor 
of  Athenian  character,  this  man  who  represented  Athenian 
impressionism  at  its  worst,  who  traded  on  it,  and  who  led 
Athens  into  the  path  of  ruin,  setting  the  pace  for  his  posterity 
of  impressionist  and  impulsive  ignorance  ! 

Once  again  we  have  reached  one  of  the  deepest  things  in 
Thucydides'  own  character — his  subtle  power  of  combining 
depth  of  feeling  with  clearness  of  insight  and  controlling  it  with 
a  self-restraint  almost  unexampled  in  literature.  He  analyses 
the  national  mind  ;  nothing  escapes  him. ;  it  is  all  set  down 
■;ith  relentless  precision — casual  readers,  yes,  and  careful 
readers  have  again  remarked  on  his  coldness,  his  detachment, 
the  clear,  keen  intellect  unclouded  by  likes  and  dislikes,  by 
feeli^T'^s  or  sympathies,  and  they  have  admired  or  disliked  it. 
They   xre^wrong.     Thucydides  is  greater  than  they  think, 

1  Tii..c.  ii.  40,  3  (Jowett).  ^  Thuc.  ii,  41,  i  (Jowett). 

^  Greek  Commonwealth,  p.  293.  Professor  Bury  also  speaks  of  -'  a 
certain  veiled  irony  "  here,  but  he,  I  think,  is  sometimes  a  shade  too 
apt  to  find  irony. 


82  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

The  warm  sympathies  are  there.  Passion,  admiration,  intensity 
of  feeling  are  not  inconsistent  in  the  greatest  natures  with 
insight  and  truth  and  restraint ;  they  work  together,  and  it  is 
their  co-operation  that  makes  the  strange  greatness  of  the 
man.  He  loves  Athens,  but  that  does  not  stay  his  hand  nor 
shake  his  touch.  He  says  no  word  to  safeguard  a  Dionysius 
from  supposing  him  resentful  and  angry  ;  if  a  man  cannot 
read  what  burns  on  every  page,  if  he  cannot  see  what  is  not  in 
ink,  nor  in  mere  written  words — then  he  can  read  the  book 
and  opine  what  he  pleases.  It  was  not  written  for  him — 
^(ovavra  avveToicrtv.  And  if  he  asks  evidence  for  what  is  said 
here,  let  him  explain  why  it  is  impossible  to  read  the  story  and 
not  be  passionately  for  Athens — Athens  right  or  wrong  ;  how 
is  it  that  the  Seventh  Book  takes  one  into  the  same  region  of 
feeling  and  suffering  that  Euripides  does  with  his  Trojan 
Women,  and  yet  the  Athenians  are  in  the  wrong  throughout 
the  whole  of  the  Sicilian  expedition  ? 

"  Others,  who  saw  their  ships  worsted,  cried  and  shrieked 
aloud,  and  were  by  the  sight  alone  more  utterly  unnerved  than 
the  defeated  combatants  themselves.  Others  again,  who  had 
fixed  their  gaze  on  some  part  of  the  struggle  which  was  un- 
decided, were  in  a  state  of  excitement  still  more  terrible  ;  they 
kept  swaying  their  bodies  to  and  fro  in  an  agony  of  hope  and  fear 
as  the  stubborn  conflict  went  on  and  on  ;  for  at  every  instant 
they  were  all  but  saved  or  all  but  lost.  And  while  the  strife 
hung  in  the  balance  you  might  hear  in  the  Athenian  army  at 
once  lamentation,  shouting,  cries  of  victory  or  defeat,  and  all 
the  various  sounds  which  are  wrung  from  a  great  host  in 
extremity  of  danger.  Not  less  agonizing  were  the  feelings  of 
those  on  board.  At  length  the  Syracusans  and  their 
allies  ..."  1 

It  is  of  this  Seventh  Book  that  Plutarch  speaks  when  he 
refers  to  "  those  narratives  in  which  Thucydides,  excelling  even 
himself  in  pathos,  in  vividness,  and  in  variety,  has  told  his 
story  in  a  way  that  defies  imitation."  ^  What  has  given  him 
this  power  ?  Why  could  not  a  Timaeus  do  it  for  all  his  trying, 
as  Plutarch  half  asks  ?  It  was  the  supreme  struggle  of  Thucy- 
dides' country  with  life  and  death  as  the  issue — and  she  lost. 
It  took  ten  more  years  of  protracted  misery  to  finish  her,  but 

^  Thuc.  vii.  71  (Jowett).  2  pi^t.  Nicias,  i. 


THUCYDIDES  83 

the  day  in  the  harbour  of  Syracuse  was  her  ruin — and  the  man 
felt  it  and  has  made  every  reader  feel  it.  Athens  fell,  and  when 
Thucydides  wrote  the  great  Epitaphios  of  Pericles,  it  was 
not  merely  a  funeral  speech  over  the  dead  of  the  first  year,  but 
a  last  great  eulogy  over  a  fallen  people.  It  has  been  compared 
with  the  speech  of  Abraham  Lincoln  at  Gettysburg — a  shorter 
speech,  spoken  while  the  Civil  War  still  continued,  by  the 
chief  of  a  great  nation,  which  "  under  God  "  had  "  a  new  birth 
of  freedom."  The  comparison  is  a  just  one  ;  there  is  the  same 
note  in  both  speeches.  Lincoln  saw  his  country  triumph  ;  not 
so  Thucydides  : 

Infelix  !    uicunque  ferent  ea  facta  nepotes, 

Vincet  amor  patriae. 

We  now  come  to  the  actual  book  he  wrote,  and  we  must  for 
the  present  try  to  use  it  neither  as  a  source  from  which  to  learn 
events,  nor  as  an  objective  thing  in  itself — if  there  is  such  a 
thing — but  to  study  it  as  the  organic  offspring  of  a  great  nature, 
an  integer,  an  artistic  whole,  and  to  pioceed  from  a  recognition 
of  its  salient  points  to  the  study  of  the  mind  and  heart  that 
produced  it. 

The  first  thing  that  stands  out  is,  that  Thucydides  from  the 
very  start  foresaw  that  the  war  would  be  above  all  others 
significant  for  the  Greek  world  and  so  for  mankind.  He 
"  began  at  once  on  its  commencement  "  ;^  he  "  lived  through 
the  whole  of  it,"  ^  and  he  "  has  written  it,  everything  in  order 
as  it  occurred,  by  summers  and  winters,  till  the  Lacedaemonians 
and  their  allies  ended  the  empire  of  the  Athenians  and  took  the 
Long  Walls  and  the  Peiraieus.  In  all,  the  war  lasted  twenty- 
seven  years."  ^  And  he  adds  that  the  Peace  of  Nicias,  as 
posterity  called  it,  did  not  really  produce  a  state  of  peace  ; 
before  it  and  after  it  the  war  was  one  war.  Modern  critics 
have  battled  as  to  the  point  at  which  he  realized  this  himself — 
did  he  compose  an  "  Archidamian  War  "  down  to  that  Peace  of 
Nicias,  and  then  write  a  "  Syracusan  Expedition  "  as  a  separate 
and  independent  work,  and  eventually  unite  the  two  histories 
by  the  slight  structure  of  the  Fif +h  Book,  and  continue  with  the 
Eighth — a  third  scheme  ?  Historians  have  done  such  things — 
Clarendon,  for  instance — but  there  are  difficulties  in  supposing 
that  Thucydides  did.     Is  not  his  prelude  in  book  i.  rather 

^  Thuc.  i.  I,  I.  2  xhuc.  v.  26,  5.  ^  Thuc.  v.  26,  i. 


84  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

too  large  and  significant  for  a  war  ending  so  inconclusively 
as  that  supposed  to  end  with  the  Peace  of  Nicias  ?  Do  not 
his  whole  treatment  of  the  war-issues  in  book  i.,  and  his 
judgment  on  Pericles  as  contrasted  with  his  successors  in 
book  ii.,  imply  the  full  and  final  war  of  twenty-seven  years? 
Was  there  interval  enough  for  "  The  Syracusan  Expedition  " 
to  be  written  (and  published  ?)  after  research  on  the  actual 
spot  before  it  was  clear  that  the  original  Peloponnesian  War 
was  in  full  course  again  ?  Does  the  whole  work  really  show 
signs  of  a  reconstruction  of  plan  ?  ^  In  any  case,  we  have  to 
allow  fundamental  revision  on  the  basis  of  the  conception  of 
one  war. 

That  he  kept  a  diary,  made  collections,  interviewed  and 
cross-examined  witnesses,  and  visited  such  scenes  of  action 
as  were  important  and  were  accessible,  is  clear.  Indeed,  he 
says  as  much  :  "Of  the  events  of  the  war  I  have  not  ventured 
to  speak  from  any  chance  information,  nor  according  to  any 
notion  of  my  ovm  ;  I  have  described  nothing  but  what  I  either 
saw  myself  or  learned  from  others  of  whom  I  made  the  most 
careful  and  particular  inquiry.  The  task  was  a  laborious  one, 
because  eye-witnesses  of  the  same  occurrences  gave  different 
accounts  of  them,  as  they  remembered  or  were  interested  in  the 
actions  of  one  side  or  the  other."  ^  It  is  easy  to  suggest  that 
it  was  this  long  investigation  that  brought  home  to  Thucydides 
the  carelessness  of  men  in  general  as  to  fact,  and  their  readiness 
to  accept  whatever  comes  first  to  hand.^  His  tone  is  severe, 
and  he  means  it  to  be  severe  ;  why  should  men  be  so  inaccurate  ? 
One  recalls  Dr.  Johnson's  vexation  with  the  poor  lady  who 
never,  when  he  tried  to  examine  her,  would  be  categorical,  but 
was  always  "  wiggle-waggle."  So  careful  was  Thucydides 
of  fact  that  a  German  scholar  has  collected  a  long  list  of  the 
places  where  he  says  he  was  unable  to  learn.*  In  one  place  he 
refrains  from  giving  a  figure,  for  "  it  would  seem  incredible 
when  compared  with  the  size  of  the  city."  ^  Some  eleven 
times  he  gives  what  he  was  told,  with  the  caution  that  it  is 

1  The  emphasis  on  oSe  6  TroXefios,  used  sometimes  of  the  Archidamian, 
at  other  times  of  the  whole  war,  is  overdone.  The  critics  seem  to  forget 
how  easily  phrases  slip  out. 

2  Thuc.  i.  22  (Jowett).  ^  Thuc.  i.  20. 

*  Busolt,  Gr.  Gesch.  iii.  653.  ^  Thuc.  iii.  113,  6, 


THUCYDIDES  85 

only  what  he  was  told.  His  exactitude  as  to  numbers  is  re- 
marked— they  are  not  like  those  of  the  rhetorical  historians ; 
in  large  figures  he  gives  thousands  and  hundreds  only — units 
only  in  the  case  of  Athens  or  where  exact  knowledge  was 
possible.  1  His  care  as  to  chronology  marks  an  epoch  in  the 
writing  of  history.  Eclipses  and  earthquakes  are  carefully 
noted;  men  date  by  them  so  much.^  The  war  began  in  the 
fifteenth  year  of  the  Thirty  Years'  Peace,  "  when  Chrysis  the 
high-priestess  of  Argos  was  in  the  forty-eighth  year  of  her 
priesthood,  Aenesias  being  ephor  at  Sparta,  and  at  Athens 
Pythodorus  having  two  months  of  his  archonship  to  run."  ^ 
He  expected  that  his  history  would  not  please — it  would  be  too 
exact  and  bare ;  *  and  his  expectation  was  right.  Dionysius 
complains  that  he  is  "  obscure  and  hard  to  follow.  Many  events, 
of  course,  occur  in  the  same  summer  or  winter  in  different 
places,  and  he  leaves  the  first  set  of  affairs  half  done  and  takes 
another  set  in  hand.  It  is  only  natural  that  we  flounder,  and 
follow  the  story  with  some  annoyance,  when  our  attention  is 
distracted  in  this  way."  ^  There  is  truth  in  the  complaint ; 
the  story  of  events  in  outlying  regions  is  very  hard  to  follow  ; 
but  anyone  who  has  worked  with  the  Hellenica  of  Xenophon  ^ 
(if  one  may  criticize  an  old  friend)  will  be  grateful  for  the 
rigid  scheme  to  which  Thucydides  sticks  so  grimly  and  con- 
scientiously. The  ideal  of  to  aKpi^h  involves  sacrifices  for 
both  writer  and  reader,  but  it  repays  them. 

In  all  this  Thucydides  has  a  definite  and  avowed  purpose. 
"  If  he  who  desires  to  have  before  his  eyes  a  true  picture  of 
the  events  which  have  happened  {rcav  re  yevofiivcov  to  aa^h 
a-Kotreiv),  and  of  the  like  events  which  may  be  expected  to 
happen  hereafter  in  the  order  of  human  things,  shall  pronounce 
what  I  have  written  to  be  useful,  then  I  shall  be  satisfied. 
My  history  is  written  as  a  possession  for  ever,  rather  than  as  a 
prize-performance  to  hear  for  the  moment."  '     In  other  words 

^  Peter,  Wahrheitu.  Kunst,  117. 

^  Cf.  Thuc.  i.  128,  Tov  fieyav  creia-fiov. 

^  Thuc.  ii.  2.         *  Thuc.  i.  22,  4.         ^  Letter  to  Pompeius,  p.  yy^. 

®  A  year  gets  mislaid  somehow  between  411  and  406  ;  did  Alcibiades 
return  to  Athens  in  408  or  407  ?     A  good  deal  turns  on  it. 

'  Thuc.  i.  22.  Is  there  not  just  a  hint  of  the  didactic,  or  even  of  the 
pedantic,  in  the  claim — as  also,  e.g.,  in  his  diction,  and  his  corrections 
of  Herodotus  ? 


86  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

he  is  writing,  as  we  might  say  in  the  language  of  to-day,  for 
men  who  take  history  seriously,  not  as  a  pastime  or  something 
vaguely  interesting,  but  as  a  rendering  of  fact  and  experience 
that  shall  illuminate  human  nature.  History  is  not  for 
Thucydides,  as  Aristotle  contemptuously  suggested,  "  just  what 
Alcibiades  did "  ;  ^  Alcibiades  had  a  deeper  significance — 
what  he  was  went  to  shape  the  whole  mind  of  Athens  to  great 
issues,  and  any  Hellene  who  wishes  to  understand  the  world 
in  which  he  lives  must  understand  the  mind  of  Athens  in  the 
war-time,  and  Alcibiades  supplies  perhaps  more  than  one  key 
to  that.  But  if  Alcibiades  is  to  give  the  reader  a  clue  and  not 
merely  to  delay  or  distract  him,  there  must  be  some  thought- 
out  principle  in  the  presentation;  and  that  brings  us  to  the 
method  of  Thucydides. 

We  have  seen  how  exigent  his  conscience  was  as  to  fact ; 
but  facts  do  not  make  a  history.  However  scientific  a 
historian  may  aim  at  being,  or  may  plume  himself  on  being, 
he  is  amenable  to  other  canons  than  those  of  the  man  of  science. 
He  comes  closer  to  the  human  mind,  and  his  task  is  (in  a  sense) 
to  introduce  mind  to  mind.  He  must  know  his  "period" 
(as  we  call  it)  and  know  it  intimately,  if  he  is  to  interpret  it  to 
another ;  but  he  must  not  do  it  in  a  mere  series  of  generaliza- 
tions, for  that  leads  at  once  to  error  and  to  vagueness.  He 
lias  after  all  to  present  men  and  women  to  his  readers,  and 
in  action,  thinking,  speaking,  doing  things,  influencing  one 
another  ;  and  this  means  other  faculties  than  those  of  scientific 
research.  He  must  in  a  word  be  an  artist — he  must  emphasize, 
omit,  combine,  he  must  speak  at  once  to  mind  and  heart,  to 
intellect  and  feeling.  These  are  the  first  conditions  of  literary 
presentment,  if  he  is  to  make  history  effective  for  the  purposes 
set  before  him.  If  he  is  content  to  be  an  annalist,  to  accumu- 
late detail,  or  if  he  prefers  to  leave  all  in  the  workshop,  it  is 
another  matter.  Every  faculty  that  makes  literature  must 
be  his,  if  his  work  is  to  live  ;  and  if  it  does  not  live  it  will  not 
avail  much  for  any  purpose. 

Limitation  is  his  first  law.  A  German  critic  has  remarked 
that  Thucydides  is  great  in  omission  ;  ^  and  he  is.  There  is 
no  end  to  the  omissions  ;    the  things  are  numberless  that  he 

.  1  Aristotle,  Poetics,  g,  145 1  b. 
2  MuUer-Striibing — --  gross  im  Verschweigen." 


THUCYDIDES  87 

could  have  told  us,  that  we  should  have  liked  to  know,  that 
we  might  have  expected  him  to  tell  us.  Greek  art  he  passes 
by — trade,  commerce,  adventure,  exploration,  poetry,  philo- 
sophy. Who  would  guess  from  his  pages  that  any  day  he 
heard  Pericles  speak,  he  might  have  met  Sophocles  in  the  street, 
and  Euripides  and  Socrates  and  Pheidias  ? — yes,  and  Aristo- 
phanes still  a  mere  lad  might  have  passed  him  too.  It  is 
perfectly  clear  that  they  all  had  their  share  of  influence  upon 
him,i  but  he  does  not  allude  to  contemporary  literature. ^ 
Homer,  the  Homeric  hymns,  Hesiod,  he  mentions,  but  not 
his  fellow-citizens.  He  omits  finance — even  that  reassessment 
of  the  tribute,  rediscovered  by  moderns  in  inscriptions,  which" 
bulks  so  big  for  economic  students  of  history.  ^  Mr.  Bury 
is  probably  right  in  saying  that  "  economic  factors  did  not 
play  anything  like  the  same  part  in  the  ancient  world,  and, 
if  ancient  historians  considerably  underrated  them,  we  may 
easily  fall  into  the  error  of  overrating  them."  ^  Thucydidt-s 
ignores  all  sorts  of  things  that  interest  us  ;  he  simplifies,  as 
M.  Girard  says,  with  a  hardihood  unmatched.^  For  one 
thing  he  is  writing  the  history  of  a  war,  not  of  a  race,  nor  of 
a  city.  It  is  also  true  that  while  he  omits  certain  aspects  of 
Athenian  life,  which  are  deeply  interesting  to  us,  now  and 
again,  as  in  Pericles'  Funeral  Speech,  it  is  clear  to  those  familiar 
with  them  that  he  is  glancing  at  art  and  literature.  But  he 
does  it  with  a  purpose  of  his  own. 

The  same  canon  of  limitation  applies,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  human  factors  in  the  war.  Hyperbolus,  we  saw,  is  only 
mentioned  because  his  murder  was  a  sort  of  manifesto.  Cleon 
was  a  decisive  influence  in  the  war  ;  so  he  is  drawn  with  care 
and  precision — and  perhaps  with  the  one  hint  of  personal 
feeling  in  the  eight  books  :  "  The  Athenians  laughed  at  his 
light  talk  ;    but  serious  people  (men   of  common  sense,  roh 

^  Cf.  the  statement  of  Mr.  B.  B.  Rogers,  translation  of  Acharnians, 
pp.  xxx-xxxii :  "  I  believe  many  statements  in  Thucydides  are  due  to 
his  recollection  of  the  comedies  of  Aristophanes."  See  also  Lamb, 
Clio  Enthroned,  pp.  26-28,  for  attractive  suggestions  as  to  the  influence 
of  poetry  upon  Thucydides. 

2  The  Atthis  of -Hellanicos  (i.  97)  is  an  exception  which  makes  the 
statement  above  more  striking. 

^  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Inscr.,  No.  64. 

*  Ancient  Greek  Historians,  p.  92.  ^  Thucydide,  p.  204. 


88  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

a-(t}<f>poa-i)  were  not  displeased,  for  they  reckoned  that  they 
would  get  one  or  other  of  two  advantages — they  would  either 
be  rid  of  Cleon,  which  they  rather  hoped,  or,  if  they  were 
mistaken  in  their  expectations,  they  would  take  the  Spartans 
prisoners."  ^  It  looks  like  personal  feeling ;  and  yet  it  is 
history.  Men  did  hope  to  be  rid  of  Cleon,  and  for  a  perfectly 
serious  and  good  reason,  as  appeared  when  he  fell  at  Amphipolis ; 
he  was  the  real  obstacle  to  peace.  When  the  obstacle  was 
removed,  peace  was  made.  Then  we  can  understand  the 
a-(o^pove<; ;  and  we  shaU  have  to  understand  Cleon — obviously ; 
so  Thucydides  draws  him  in  his  own  way,  lets  him  make  a 
speech,  and  gives  us  the  full  value  of  his  maniac  boast  and  the 
success  that  made  common  people  think  him  infallible  and 
invincible.  In  a  similar  way,  Alcibiades'  chariots  and  horses 
and  luxury  and  general  expensiveness,  his  blatant  self-assertion, 
and  some  touches  even  of  his  phrase,  are  set  out  in  full  in  the 
history.  There  were  other  sumptuous  and  magnificent  young 
men  in  Athens,  as  Aristophanes  and  others  let  us  see,  but  they 
did  not  matter.  Alcibiades  did  matter — only  too  much.  "  In 
the  end  his  wild  courses  went  far  to  ruin  the  Athenian  state. 
For  the  people  feared  the  extremes  to  which  he  carried  his 
lawless  self-indulgence,  and  the  far-reaching  purposes  which 
animated  him  in  all  his  actions.  They  thought  he  was  aiming 
at  a  tyranny,  and  set  themselves  against  him.  And  therefore, 
although  his  talents  as  a  military  commander  were  unrivalled, 
they  entrusted  the  administration  of  the  war  to  others,  because 
they  personally  objected  to  his  private  life  ;  and  so  they 
speedily  shipwrecked  the  state."  ^  So  in  the  case  of  Pericles, 
long  as  he  waits  before  he  mentions  him,  the  historian  lingers 
over  him,  and  lets  us  feel  the  full  effect  exerted  upon  his  fellow- 
citizens  by  this  great  personality.  Here  was  a  man — not 
quite  perhaps  of  Thucydides'  own  party — who  could  have 
saved  the  state  ;  at  least,  men  felt  it  would  have  been  saved, 
if  they  had  not  in  folly  abandoned  the  principles  he  laid 
down  for  the  conduct  of  the  war.  The  forceful  personality 
is  always  a  real  factor — real  as  the  great  plague,  or  the 
Syracusan  disaster,  or  the  Persian  alliance.     So  far  Thucy- 

^  Thuc.  iv.  28,  5. 

2  Thuc.  vi.  15  (Jowett).     Cf.  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  4,  12-5,  16;    Plut. 
Alcib.  34. 


THUCYDIDES  89 

dides  may  be   cited   to    support    Carlyle's    doctrine    of   the 
Hero. 

The  remark  is  often  made  that  Thucydides  offers  no  moral 
judgments  on  men  or  actions — a  remark  which  we  have  already 
discussed — but  all  his  praise,  or  comment,  turns  on  capacity, 
aperrj,  virtu,  as  Professor  Bury  and  Professor  Murray  translate 
him.  ^va€w<i  la-yv'i — "  strength  of  nature  " — the  forceful 
character — the  gift  or  gifts  in  virtue  of  which  a  man  may 
move  men  or  read  a  situation,  in  a  word,  may  really  "  do  " 
something — this  endowment,  whatever  it  is,  Thucydides 
emphasizes,  for  it  makes  a  man  a  telling  factor.  Cleon  had  it, 
violent  and  absurd  as  he  was — so  had  Pericles  and  Antiphon 
— above  all,  Themistocles.^  Here  "  was  a  man  whose  natural 
force  {(f>va-€co<i  l(Tx^v)  was  unmistakable ;  this  was  the 
quality  for  which  he  was  distinguished  above  other  men ; 
from  his  own  native  acuteness  {olKela  yap  ^vvecrei),  and  with- 
out study  .either  before  or  at  the  time,  he  was  the  ablest  judge 
{KpdriaTo<;  yvco/Jiwv)  of  the  course  to  be  pursued  in  a 
sudden  emergency,  and  could  best  divine  what  was  likely  to 
happen  in  the  remotest  future.  ...  In  a  word,  Themistocles, 
by  natural  power  of  mind  (^vcrew?  /juev  Bwdfjuet)  and  with  the 
least  preparation,  was  of  all  men  the  best  able  to  extemporize 
the  right  thing  to  be  done."  Xenophon's  heroes,  like  Xeno- 
phon  himself,  turn  to  soothsayer  and  priest  for  omens  and 
divine  guidance.  Thucydides  is  aware  that  men  do  so — that 
thejT-  do  it  a  great  deal ;  ^  yet  history  is  made  by  the  men  with 
force  of  mind ;  and  he  confines  himself,  in  dealing  with  men,  to 
that.  His  readers  will  be  put  in  possession  of  the  facts,  and 
shall  judge  of  moral  questions  for  themselves. 

Mr.  Cornford  notices  that  Thucydides  has  nothing  to  do 
with  such  conceptions  as  "  political  factors,"  "  relations  of 
forces,"  "  universal  forces,"  and  so  on,  and  suggests  that 
their  importation  into  modem  study  has  not  been  all  to  the 
good.  The  use  of  abstract  nouns  in  history  is  something  we 
apparently  owe  to  political  science.     The  abstract  nouns  of 

1  Thuc.  i.  138,  3  (Jowett).  The  antithetic  coupHng  of  superlatives 
is  a  characteristic  mannerism.  Cf.  Forbes,  Thuc.  bk.  i.  Intr.  p.  xxiii, 
who  gives  a  series  of  striking  instances  of  "  greatest  "  events,  etc. 

2  Cf.  Mr.  Lamb's  remark    on    the  weak  spot  in  Nicias'  character, 
r«  ToiovTw,  Thuc.  vii.  50,  4  {Clio  Enthroned,  p.  75). 


90  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Thucydides  would  make  a  poor  and  rather  odd  list  for  a 
modern  ^ — many  of  them  would  be  neuter  participles  with 
the  article  prefixed.  But  we  must  not  quite  class  him  with 
Carlyle  in  the  matter  of  heroes — despite  the  strong  likeness 
between  the  "  hero  "  and  the  "  man  of  natural  force."  There 
are,  as  we  all  know,  in  national  and  international  questions, 
floating  ideas  put  about  no  one  knows  how,  alarms  as  to  what 
may  happen,  opinions  as  to  courses  to  pursue — drift-thought 
that  tells  in  the  long  run,  which  a  historian  cannot  well 
neglect,  for  it  goes  very  often  to  shape  a  national  resolve  or 
leads  the  way  to  some  great  change.  There  was  "  talk  of  a 
dictatorship  "  in  Rome  for  a  good  while  before  Caesar  became 
the  world's  master.  Now  gather  up  the  vague  "  political 
factors,"  current  impressions,  impulses,  calculations,  and  there 
is  an  aggregate  of  contributions  to  every  political  situation, 
which  has  to  be  represented,  if  the  reader  is  really  to  be  in 
possession  of  what  he  needs.  A  modern  historian  manages  it 
by  discussion,  fortified  by  the  quotation  of  popular  catchwords 
and  watchwords,  phrases  from  the  speeches,  dispatches,  news- 
paper articles,  census  reports,  stock  exchange  news,  letters, 
biographies,  and  so  forth,  of  the  day ;  and  if  he  does  it  well, 
he  can  carry  his  reader  far  into  the  life  and  thought  of  the 
period  and  the  moment.  It  is  obvious  that  an  ancient 
historian  had  none  of  these  paper  aids,  and  yet  the  life  that 
pulses  through  them  to-day  was  not  wanting  then.  -He  could 
not  very  well  quote  what  did  not  exist,  and  yet  he  had  to  do 
something  equivalent.  Thucydides  cut  the  knot  by  writing 
speeches  himself,  in  which  he  set  out  the  considerations  and 
factors  which  would  come  into  play  at  each  significant  juncture. 
In  the  same  chapter,^  already  quoted,  in  which  he  tells  us  of 
his  care  to  see,  to  learn,  and  to  examine  witnesses  in  order  to 
be  sure  as  to  what  really  occurred,  he  tells  us  as  explicitly 
that  the  speeches  stand  on  another  footing  altogether. 

"As  to  the  speeches  which  were  made  either  before  or 
during  the  war,  it  was  hard  for  me,  and  for  others  who  reported 
them  to  me,  to  recollect  the  exact  words.     I  have  therefore 

^  Dionysius,  in  the  Letter  to  Ammaeus,  has  some  interesting  observa- 
tions on  his  pecuHar  tricks  with  nouns  and  genders,  e.g.  vi.  24,  to  /SouXo- 
fievov  for  TTjv  ^ovKr}(nv. 

2  Thuc.  i.  22,  I. 


THUCYDIDES  91 

put  into  the  mouth  of  each  speaker  the  sentiments  proper  to 
the  occasion,  expressed  as  I  thought  he  would  be  likely  to  express 
them,  while  at  the  same  time  I  endeavoured,  as  nearly  as  I  could, 
to  give  the  general  purport  of  what  was  actually  said." 

Nothing  could  be  more  explicit.  The  method  has  the 
advantage  of  enabling  him  to  simplify — he  can  sweep  away 
irrelevant  and  trifling  figures  and  keep  his  stage  clear  for  the 
people  who  really  matter.  It  allows  him  to  touch  the  real 
place  of  speech  in  Greek  life,  while  his  readers  escape  the 
irrelevant  floods  of  Athenian  loquacity.  He  "  speaks  things," 
as  Cromwell  said.  His  speeches  represent  real  factors,  real 
issues,  the  reflections  that  would  really  occur  to  thoughtful 
men.  The  method  again  allows  him  to  give  a  situation  or  a 
national  character  from  more  points  of  view  than  one,^  and 
to  do  it  all  while  he  keeps  himself  and  his  own  opinions  in 
the  background.  Of  course  he  is  not  really  absent  from  the 
speaker's  Mma  on  any  occasion,  nor  is  the  modern  historian 
with  his  woof  and  web  of  quotations  and  impressions  ;  but 
the  device  of  Thucydides  takes  us,  or  seems  to  take  us — it  is 
psychologically  for  us  much  the  same  thing^right  into  the 
actual  scene.  Imagination — ^in  Coleridge's  sense  of  the  word 
— is  an  essential  in  the  writing  or  reading  of  history,  and 
Thucydides'  method  of  using  the  speech  is  a  stimulus  to 
imagination,  not  less  effective  for  being  an  unobtrusive 
stimulus.  Here  it  is  plain  that  the  historian  learnt  some  of 
his  craft  from  the  tragic  poet. 

Modern  critics  have  tried  to  classify  the  speeches  in  different 
ways.  Mr.  Grundy  draws  a  line  at  the  exile,  and  groups  the 
earlier  speeches  as  those  which  Thucydides  may  have  heard, 
and  those  which  he  probably  or  almost  certainly  did  not  hear  ; 
while  of  the  speeches  after  the  exile,  unless  he  heard  Alcibiades 
at  Sparta,  it  is  practically  certain  he  heard  none  whatever.^ 
Mr.  Comford  has  another  grouping,  which  is  suggestive.^ 
There  are  realistic  speeches,  he  says,  like  that  of  the  ephor  ;  * 

^  Thus  there  are  three  pictures  of  the  Spartan  character  in  bk.  i., 
in  three  speeches,  cc.  71,  80,  86. 

2  Grundy,  Thucydides  and  his  Age,  p.  19. 

2  Thucydides  Mythistoricus,  p.  149  f.     See  also  Lamb,  Clio  Enthroned, 

p.  183. 

*  Thuc.  i.  86.  One  might  add  vi.  18.  3,  where  the  schoHast  re- 
marks it  is  KUT  'AXKi/3iaSi;i/ — in  his  vein. 


92  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

idealistic,  the  great  Funeral  Oration  above  all ;  a  class  "  in 
which  sketches  of  national  character  are  introduced  indirectly," 
like  the  Corinthian's  picture  of  the  Athenian  nature,  "  with 
some  strain  upon  dramatic  probability,"  shading  off  into  a 
class  "  where  irony  is  openly  employed  in  the  tragic  manner  " 
— e.g.  the  Mitylenaean  speech  of  Cleon  ;  and  lastly  a  group 
"  still  further  removed  from  realism,"  and  virtually  "  but  one 
degree  below  the  lyric  plane  " — of  which  the  Spartan  speech 
as  to  Pylos  and  luck  is  an  example.  Such  groupings  have 
'their  value ;  but  the  main  thing  is  to  keep  the  mind  clear  as 
to  the  historian's  purpose,  by  a  medium  avowedly  artificial, 
to  bring  the  reader  to  grips  with  what  is  undoubtedly  real. 
Mr.  Cornford  would  say  it  was  not  real,  but  Thucydides  clearly 
believed  that  it  was.  The  speeches  were  perhaps  not  made  at 
all — Busolt  holds,  however,  that  every  one  of  them  rests  on 
some  foundation  of  a  speech  actually  delivered  ;  ^ — everybody 
agrees  that  they  could  not  have  been  given  in  the  form  in 
which  we  have  them,  for  the  Spartan  speeches,  for  instance, 
are  far  outside  the  Spartan  range,  and  in  any  case  no  con- 
ceivable popular  audience  would  have  listened  to  speakers 
so  involved  and  obscure,^  as  Thucydides,  ex-politician,  must 
have  known  at  least  as  well  as  we  do.  Yet  Eduard  Meyer  hits 
the  mark  when  he  calls  them  "  den  eigentlichen  Lebensnerv  " 
of  his  work.3  Perhaps  with  some  hesitation  as  to  the  super- 
lative adjective  (if  conscience  works  with  memory  ^)  one  might 
sum  the  matter  up  by  borrowing  the  lines  of  Critias  on  another 
great  inventor : 

— TovaSe  Tovs  Xoyovs  Xeycov 
8i8ayna.Taiv  ^8i(TT0v  elcrrjyrjiTaTo 
■^^eiiSei  tcaXvyJAas  Trjv  dXqdeiav  X6ya>.^ 

1  Busolt,  Gr.  Gesch.  iii.  p.  672. 

2  Let  the  reader  just  think  for  a  moment  of  Phormio's  speech  to  his 
sailors. 

*  E.  Meyer,  Forsch.  ii.  p.  380. 
-  *  Some  readers  may  be  glad  to  know  that  Cratippus,  his  contem- 
porary, 6  (TvyaKfidaras  avr<5  koi  to.  TrapdXeL(f)&evTa  vtt'  avrov  crvvayayoiv 
(whatever  that  exactly  means),  wrote,  ov  fiovov  rais  irpd^eanv  avTcis  (viz. 
the  speeches)  efnroBav  yeyevrjcrdai  Xeycov,  dXXa  toIs  aKOVovcriv  oxXrjpas  ewai. 
Cratippus  added  that  Thucydides  realized  this  himself,  and  that  that  is 
why  there  are  no  speeches  in  bk.  viii.  So  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus, 
de  Thucydide,  ch.  16,  p.  847. 

^  Ap,  Sext.  Empir.  adv.  Math.  ix.  54. 


THUCYDIDES  93 

It  has  long  been  observed  what  an  influence  Tragedy  had 
upon  Thucydides.  Indeed,  again  and  again  it  is  hard  not  to 
use  the  terms  of  Tragedy  in  discussing  his  work.  Like  the  tragic 
poet  he  refrains  from  comment  and  lets  the  situation  draw  out 
the  comment  for  itself.  Xenophon  is  more  Homeric — v^ttio'?, 
cries  Homer  of  this  man  and  the  other,  and  Xenophon  pauses 
to  remark,  for  instance,  on  the  shocking  impiety  in  the  Corin- 
thian revolution.^  Mr.  Comford,  however,  suggests  that,  con- 
sciously borrowing  the  outward  form  of  Tragedy,  Thucydides 
took  unconsciously  the  further  step,  and  fell  in  with  its  inward 
form  and  principle  of  design — that,  in  short,  he  wrote  his 
history  "  to  the  tune  of  "  Aeschylus'  Agamemnon.^  With 
amazing  ingenuity  he  traces  an  analogy  as  far  as  the  end  of 
book  vii. — luck,  hybris,  peripeteia,  and  all ;  and  then  comes 
the  Eighth  Book,  which  is  "  outside  the  tragedy  "  somewhat. 
"  From  this  point  onwards,"  says  Mr.  Cornford,  "  he  has 
little  interest  in  his  task  ;  the  Eighth  Book  is  a  mere  continua- 
tion on  the  old  chronological  plan,  unfinished,  duU,  and  spirit- 
less. The  historian  patiently  continued  his  record  ;  but  he  seems 
to  grope  his  way  like  a  man  without  a  clue."  ^  A  strange  judg- 
ment in  view  of  the  clear  prospect  Thucydides  holds  out  from 
the  beginning  of  writing  the  whole  war  down  to  404,  and  of  his 
premature  statement  that  it  is  written.*  A  theory  which 
requires  us  to  find  the  narrative  of  the  Four  Hundred  "  dull 
and  spiritless  "  needs  some  reconsideration. 

Jowett  thought  better  of  the  Eighth  Book.  "  The  love  of 
truth,  the  power  of  thought,  the  absence  of  moral  approbation 
or  disapprobation,  the  irony,  the  perception  of  character,  ^ 
the  moderation  of  statement,  the  general  excellence,  no  less  than 
the  mechanical  arrangement  into  summers  and  winters,  and 
the  minutiae  of  language  and  phraseology,  '  cry  aloud,'  in  the 
words  of  Marcellinus,  that  the  Eighth  Book  is  the  composition 
of  Thucydides."  The  sentence  sums  up  well  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  historian,  with  some  of  which  we  have 

1  Iliad,  xii.  113  ;  xvi.  46,  686,  etc.,  and  Hellenica,  iv.  4,  3. 

2  Matthew  Arnold  spoke  of  a  history  of  English  literature  being 
--  written  to  the  tune  of  -  Rule  Britannia.'  " 

3  Thucydides  Mythistoricus,  244.  *  Thuc.  v.  26. 

^  Dionysius  thought  Thucydides  weak  in  this  point,  ethos,  at  least 
as  compared  with  Herodotus,  but  allowed  him  better  in  pathos. 


94  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

already  dealt — inevitably,  for  wherever  one  touches  Thucydides, 
the  whole  man  is  involved.^  The  ancients  laid  stress  on 
his  vividness  and  his  pathos.  No  more  need  be  said  for  the 
moment  of  the  latter.  But  let  the  reader  run  over  in  his  mind 
such  scenes  as  the  opening  of  the  war,  the  coming  of  the 
Ambraciot  herald,  the  building  of  the  fort  at  Pylos,  the  sailing 
of  the  great  fleet  for  Syracuse,  Epipolae,^  the  Terror  in  Athens, 
the  fort  of  Eetioneia,  and  the  whole  story  of  the  Four  Hundred, 
and  let  him  realize  that  in  most  of  these  instances  the  historian 
was  not  there  at  the  time,  and  he  will  have  a  new  sense  of  the 
power  of  the  man.  He  went  to  one  and  another  of  the  places 
afterwards,  and,  as  Longinus  says,  he  "  makes  his  account 
no  longer  a  narrative  but  a  living  action"  {ivaycovLov  Trpdy/jLo). 
The  best  h5rperboles,  Longinus  says  a  few  pages  later,  are  those 
which  are  not  noticed.  "This  happens  when  they  are  uttered 
in  an  outburst  of  strong  feeling,  and  in  harmony  with  a  certain 
grandeur  in  the  crisis  described,  as  where  Thucydides  is 
speaking  of  the  men  perishing  in  Sicily.  '  For  the  Syracusans,' 
he  says,  '  came  down  and  butchered  them,  especially  those  in 
the  river,  and  the  water  was  at  once  spoiled,  but  they  went 
on  drinking  just  the  same,  mud  and  all,  bloody  as  it  was,  even 
fighting  to  have  it.'  That  blood  and  mud  were  drunk  together, 
and  yet  were  things  to  be  fought  for,  becomes  credible  in  the 
intensity  of  the  feeling  and  in  the  crisis."  ^ 

It  was  thus  the  ancients  read  Thucydides,  sensible  of  his 
power  of  mind,  his  austere  grandeur,  his  restrained  pathos. 
They,  like  ourselves,  had  to  wrestle  with  his  style  and  his 
grammar,  his  plurals  and  genders,  his  raclnng-  of  every  known 
constrnction,  the  tricks  of  phrase  he  learnt  from  Gorgias,  the 
awful  guesses  in  which  he  involved  his  readers  {BvaeUaara  toU 
7ro\Xoi<i),  his  diction  "figurative,  obsolete,  archaized,  and 
strange."  ^  They  wondered,  like  some  of  the  moderns,  whether 
he  were  an  atheist,  and  made  guesses  as  to  the  school  in  which 
he  learnt  his  atheism — was  it  that  of  Anaxagoras  ?  ^     But 

1  Girard,  Thucydide,  221  :  "  Quelque  peu  que  Ton  touche  au  livre 
de  Thuc.  on  I'y  entrevoit  lui-meme." 

2  Thuc.  ii.  7,  8  ;  iii.  113;  iv.  4  ;  vi.  27  ;   vii.  97  ff. 

*  Longinus,  25  and  38. 

*  Dionysius,  Letter  to  Ammaeus,  790,  ttju  TpoiriKr^v  kcu  yXarrrjiiaTiKrjv  koX 
aTvrfp-}(ai,(imkvrfV  /cat  ^evrjv  Xe^iv. 

^  Marcellinus,  Life,  22. 


THUCYDIDES  95 

is  he  an  atheist  ?  He  never  says,  one  way  or  the  other.  He 
remarks  at  once  how  much  men  are  moved  by  the  thought  of 
the  gods  and  how  little.  Seer  and  prophet  and  omen  abounded 
when  the  Sicilian  fleet  sailed  ;  and  when  the  disaster  came, 
men  were  angry  with  the  prophets  who  misled  them.^  Men 
appeal  to  the  thought  of  the  gods  in  distress,  and  their  enemies 
brush  the  appeal  aside.  The  Eumolpidai  and  Heralds,  who 
had  put  the  curse  on  Alcibiades,  "  called  heaven  and  earth 
to  witness  that  the  city  must  never  restore  a  man  who  had 
been  banished  for  profaning  the  mysteries."  ^  The  city  did 
recall  him  ;  the  curse  was  taken  off ;  and  Alcibiades  celebrated 
the  mysteries  with  his  troops.  But  the  strangest  case  was 
that  of  Nicias — "  least  deserving  of  all  Greeks  in  my  time  to 
come  to  such  misfortune,  for  he  lived  in  the  practice  of  every 
virtue."  Professor  Bury  deflects  the  participle  {vevofita-fjbevrjv) 
from  practice  to  virtue — "  every  conventional  virtue  " — and 
finds  not  encomium  but  malice  in  the  sentence.  I  do  not  think 
so.^  The  man  is  deeper  and  greater  than  such  a  mood  at  such 
a  moment.  Yes,  Nicias  was  pious,  even  superstitious,  but  he 
failed  in  "  strength  of  nature  " — ^he  was  not  strong  enough 
nor  clear  enough — ^perhaps  it  was  due  at  the  last  to  his  kidne\7 
disease — ^perhaps  there  was  always  the  weakness  of  cautious 
self-protection  about  him. 

But,  after  all,  opinions  about  the  gods — or  about  anything 
— are  not  Thucydides'  immediate  affair.  This  is  M^hat  hap- 
pened, and  may  happen  again  ;  if  the  reader  wishes  to  have  a 
true  picture  of  it,  here  it  is  ;  the  picture  shall  speak  for  itself. 
Thucydides  an  Athenian  fecit. 

1  Thuc.  viii.  i.  ^  Thuc.  viii.  53. 

®  I  find  Mr.  Lamb  is  also  against  the  idea  of  irony — "  are  we  to 
take  it  as  ironical,  and  not  merely  a  remark  on  the  ways  of  the  universe, 
when  we  read  that  the  plague  was  most  deadly  to  those  who  had  any 
pretensions  to  virtue — 8ie(f)delpovTo,  koI  iJ,d\ia-Ta  oi  aperies  ti  neraTToiovixevoi 
(ii.  51,  5)  ?  "  {Clio  Enthroned,  p.  74). 


CHAPTER   IV 

ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME 

"  X  N  those  old  happy  days  "  is  the  phrase  of  Demos- 
I  thenes  as  he  looks  back  over  eighty  years  to  the  time 
X.  when  his  country  ruled  an  empire  and  ruled  herself 
and  her  own  citizens,  when  the  assaults  of  her  enemies  had 
broken  down  and  she  had  not  yet  wantonly  ruined  herself 
in  the  Sicilian  expedition.^  It  is  in  human  nature  to  idealize 
the  past — when  Prometheus  made  the  first  man,  he  slaked 
his  clay  ^  with  the  water  of  Lethe,  it  seems,  and  we  forget  in 
the  long  run  what  it  pains  us  to  remember.  "  In  those  old 
happy  days  "  Aristophanes  was  impressed  with  the  degeneracy 
of  his  contemporaries,  when  he  thought  of  the  men  who  had 
fought  at  Marathon.  And  yet  for  us  who  read  Athenian 
literature,  those  days  do  represent  the  very  midsummer  of 
Greek  genius.  The  glory  passed  away  ;  the  war,  that  was 
to  safeguard  it,  proved  the  occasion  of  its  undoing.  The 
Athenians  "  did  all  that  Pericles  told  them  not  to  do  "  ;  his 
successors,  "  each  one  struggling  to  be  first  himself,  were 
ready  to  sacrifice  the  whole  conduct  of  affairs  to  the  whim  of 
the  people  "  ;  it  was  not  that  they  were  unequal  to  the  tasks 
they  undertook,  but  that  they  should  never  have  undertaken 
them  at  all,  or,  undertaking  them,  they  should  have  kept 
their  minds  to  them  ;  so  "  in  the  end  they  were  overthrown, 
not  by  their  enemies,  but  by  themselves  and  their  own  internal 
dissensions."  ^  We  have  seen  something  of  the  wonder  of  the 
age  of  Pericles  ;  we  have  now  to  look  at  the  city  he  left — its 
policies,  its  government,  its  people,  and  its  general  life. 

Our  concern  is  with  a  nation  in  war-time,  and  this  compels 

1  Meidias,  143. 

2  Pausanias  saw  some  of  this  clay  preserved  as  a  relic  (x.  4,  4),  but 
the  water  of  Lethe  is  the  fancy  of  a  much  later  mythographer. 

3  Thuc.  ii.  65. 

96 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  97 

us  to  consider  more  closely  the  whole  question  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesian  War.     How  came  it  about  that  Athens  and  Sparta 
fought  so  long  and  that  they  fought  at  all  ?     To  us,  war  is 
essentially  an  exceptional  condition,  disorganizing  life  in  every 
country  in  any  way  concerned  with  either  belligerent  power. 
Steamships  and  electric  telegraphs  and  international  loans  have 
made  the  whole  modem  world  acutely  and  quickly  sensitive 
to  what  happens  in  any  part  of  the  earth,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  think  ourselves  away  from  these  basal  factors  of  human  life 
as  we  know  it.    The  Peloponnesian  War  vitally  affected  thF 
whole  economics  of  all  Greece  and  altered  the  conditions  on  I 
which  men  and  cities  should  live,  and,  in  the  insensible  way  in  f 
which  such  things  come,  it  changed  the  very  axioms  of  political '; 
thought.     Yet  the  men  who  made  the  war  in  the  first  instance  j 
did  so  to  prevent  change.  J 

The  central  figure  in  the  whole  discussion  as  to  the  war  and  - 
its  origin  is  Pericles.  Some  part  of  this  eminence  he  owes  to 
his  fellow-countryman,  Aristophanes.  This  is  not  begging 
the  question.  There  were,  no  doubt,  statesmen  in  the  other 
cities,  but  we  hardly  know  their  names — a  few  names  at 
Sparta,  none  at  all  in  Corinth,^  or  if  we  do  know  them  we  forget 
them  quite  easily.  Pericles  made  the  war,  says  Aristophanes  ; 
and  so  says  Plutarch  long  after  in  his  biography,  relying  on 
Aristophanes  and  on  others  less  famous.  "  All  the  same,"' ' 
he  says,  "  embassies  were  sent,  and  sent  again,  to  Athens  ; 
and  the  Spartan  king,  Archidamos,  did  his  best  to  bring  most 
of  the  grievances  to  a  friendly  settlement  and  to  pacify  the 
allies  ;  so  that  it  looks  as  if  the  war  would  not  have  come  upon 
the  Athenians,  if  they  had  been  persuaded  to  rescind  the 
Megarian  decree  and  be  reconciled  with  the  Megarians.  It  - 
was  Pericles  who  offered  the  strongest  opposition  to  this,  and 
who  egged  on  the  people  to  stand  to  their  quarrel  with  Megara, 
so  he  alone  had  the  blame  of  the  war.  ...  He  seems  to  have 
had  in  his  mind  some  secret  and  private  grievance  against  the 
Megarians."  ^  Before  long  Plutarch,  as  was  inevitable,  refers 
to  "  the  famous  and  hackneyed  lines  of  Aristophanes,"  and 
then,  like  a  loyal  Greek  of  his  period,  edges  away  from  them. 

^  Unless  one  counts  the  filibuster,  Timolaos,  of  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia, 
2,3. 

^  Plut.  Pericles,  29,  5  ;  30,  2. 

7 


98  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

"  What  the  original  cause  was,  it  is  not  easy  to  learn  ;  but 
for  the  decree  not  being  rescinded  all  alike  blame  Pericles." 
Then  he  hazards  another  suggestion,  offered  by  antiquity — 
the  prosecution  of  Pheidias,  followed  by  his  death  in  prison 
and  his  alleged  poisoning  by  some  agent  of  Pericles,  who  feared 
his  revelations — a  whole  tissue  of  scandal  which  we  need  not 
consider.  Pheidias  was  prosecuted,  to  annoy  Pericles,  but 
another  ancient  writer  says  he  died  in  Elis,  where  he  made  the 
great  statue  of  Olympian  Zeus.  After  Pheidias,  then  Aspasia 
and  Anaxagoras,  and  their  troubles — and  then  "  in  fear  of 
being  tried  himself,  he  availed  himself  of  the  war,  which  was 
lingering  and  smouldering,  and  he  blew  it  into  a  blaze — in 
the  hope  that  in  this  way  he  would  scatter  the  charges  brought 
against  him  and  dissipate  his  unpopularity  ;  for,  when  the  city 
came  to  be  involved  in  great  affairs  and  great  dangers,  she 
would  trust  herself  to  him  alone,  because  of  his  reputation 
and  his  ability."  And  then  Plutarch  sheers  away  again — 
"  the  grounds  for  his  refusing  to  let  the  people  give  way  to  the 
Spartans  are  alleged,  but  the  truth  is  uncertain."  Plutarch 
does  not  like  these  suggestions — ^he  never  liked  anything  that 
reflected  on  the  glory  of  the  ancient  Greeks,  as  his  dislike 
of  Herodotus  shows — ^but  he  found  them  in  his  books,  and  was 
uneasy  at  omitting  them.  His  Life  of  Pericles  is  indeed  one  of 
his  most  significant  works — -most  valuable  as  a  collection  of 
evidence,  and  delightful  reading,  but  not  a  coherent  or  intelli- 
gible portraiture  of  a  statesman. 

Plutarch  at  all  events  has  preserved  for  us  a  fair  mass  of 
contemporary  or  semi-posthumous  gossip  against  Pericles,  and 
he  has  made  the  inevitable  reference  to  Aristophanes.  In 
425  B.C.  the  young  poet  produced  The  Acharnians,  which  is 
still  one  of  the  pleasantest  and  most  attractive  of  his  plays. 
It  is  a  plea  for  peace,  like  so  many  of  his  comedies  of  the  war- 
time. The  hero,  Dikaiopolis,  has  to  plead  for  his  life  against 
the  Acharnian  elders,  who  are  enraged  with  the  Peloponnesians 
because  of  their  ravaged  lands — and  the  scoundrel  has  made 
peace  on  his  account  with  the  national  enemy,  and  this  is  what 

he  says  : 

The  Lacedaemonians  I  detest  entirely  ; 
And  may  Poseidon,  Lord  of  Taenarum, 
Shake  all  their  houses  down  about  their  ears  ; 
For  I,  like  you,  have  had  my  vines  cut  down. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  99 

But  after  all — for  none  but  friends  are  here — 
Why  the  Laconians  do  we  blame  for  this  ? 
For  men  of  ours,  I  do  not  say  the  State, 
Remember  this,  I  do  not  say  the  State, 
But  worthless  fellows  of  a  worthless  stamp. 
Ill-coined,  ill-minted,  spurious  little  chaps, 
Kept  on  denouncing  Megara's  little  coats. 
And  if  a  cucumber  or  hare  they  saw, 
Or  sucking-pig,  or  garlic,  or  lump-salt. 
All  were  Megarian,  and  were  sold  off-hand. 
Still  these  were  trifles  and  our  country's  way, 
But  some  young  tipsy  cottabus-players  went 
And  stole  from  Megara-town  the  fair  Simaetha. 
Then  the  Megarians,  garlicked  with  the  smart. 
Stole,  in  return,  two  of  Aspasia's  hussies. 
From  these  three  Wantons  o'er  the  Hellenic  race 
Burst  forth  the  first  beginnings  of  the  War. 
For  then,  in  wrath,  the  Olympian  Pericles 
Thundered  and  lightened,  and  confounded  Hellas, 
Enacting  laws  which  ran  like  drinking-songs. 
That  the  Megarians  presently  depart 
From  earth  and  sea,  the  mainland  and  the  mart. 
Then  the  Megarians,  slowly  famishing, , 
Besought  their  Spartan  friends  to  get  the  Law 
Of  the  Three  Wantons  cancelled  and  withdrawn. 
And  oft  they  asked  us  and  we  yielded  not. 
Then  followed  instantly  the  clash  of  shields. ^ 

Aristophanes  is  explicit,  as  a  comic  poet  should  be.  He 
is  not  weighing  evidence,  nor  writing  for  the  encyclopaedias 
of  posterity.  His  business  is  to  discredit  the  war  and  make 
it  look  trifling,  and  if  there  were  other  causes  for  it — well,  it 
was  seven  years  ago,  and  the  festival  of  Dionysos  needs  no 
history  lecture  ;  it  had  other  aims.  So  that  if  we  do  not  get 
history  from  the  poet,  what  right  had  we  ever  to  expect  it  ? 
The  French  critics  are  quite  right  who  cite  Aristophanes  as 
one  of  the  striking  examples  of  the  power  great  writers  have 
of  paralysing  critics  and  obscuring  facts. ^  Indeed,  there  is  an 
attractive  suggestion  that  in  the  story  of  the  Three  Wantons 
Aristophanes  is  parodying  the  opening  of  the  history  of 
Herodotus.     The  decree  he  gently  adapts — misquotes  would 

1  Aristophanes,  Ach.  509-539,  the  translation  of  Mr.  B.  B. 
Rogers. 

2  Langlois  and  Seignobos,  Intr,  to  Study  of  History,  p.  171, 


100  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

be  too  hard  a  word — to  a  famous  drinking-catch  of  Timocreon 
of  Rhodes  :  ^ 

Blind  Plutus  !    would  nor  earth, 
Nor  sea,  nor  mainland  might  behold  thee  ! 

But  Tartarus,  void  of  mirth, 
And  Acheron's  dismal  stream  enfold  thee  ! 
For  all  the  ills  there  be, 
Blind  Plutus,  come  from  thee  ! 

Now  suppose  all  he  says  is  true — that  Simaetha  was  stolen, 
and  two  other  girls  stolen  in  requital,  and  that  Aspasia  told 
Pericles — what  an  absurd  account  of  a  great  war's  origin! 
"  Exactly,"  Aristophanes  might  say,  "  so  you  begin  to  suspect 
humour  in  a  comedy  !  Admirable  !  "  The  suggestion  that 
Aspasia  kept  hetairai  is  matched  by  the  statement,  made  a 
little  above  and  constantly  repeated,  that  the  mother  of 
Euripides  was  a  greengrocer.  The  only  really  relevant  facts 
seem  to  be  that  there  were  custom-house  quarrels  with  Megara, 
followed  by  a  decree  excluding  the  Megarians  from — some- 
thing, and  then  a  war,  and  vines  cut  down.^  To  the  decree 
we  shall  return. 

Four  years  later,  Aristophanes  in  another  play  explained 
why  Peace  had  vanished,  and  how  she  was  to  come  back. 
Hermes  himself  tells  the  story  to  Trygaios,  the  beetle  hero, 
and  to  the  chorus  : 

Hermes.  Pheidias  began  the  mischief,  having  come  to  grief 
and  shame, 
Pericles  was  next  in  order,  fearing  he  might  share  the  blame. 
Dreading   much   your   hasty  temper,    and   your   savage   bulldog 

ways. 
So  before  misfortune  reached  him,  he  contrived  a  flame  to  raise, 
By  his  Megara-enactment  setting  all  the  world  ablaze.  .  .  . 
There  was  none  to  stay  the  tumult ;  Peace  in  silence  disappeared. 
Trygaios.  By  Apollo,  I  had  never  heard  these  simple  facts 
narrated, 
No,  nor  knew  she  was  so  closely  to  our  Pheidias  related. 

Chorus.  No,  nor  I,  till  just  this  moment :    that  is  why  she 
looks  so  fair. 
Goodness  me  !    how  many  things  escape  our  notice,  I  declare.* 

1  If  this  is  rendered  a  little  freely,  and  epithets  added,  "  it  seemed 
inhuman  somehow,"  as  Plutarch  says,  not  to  rhyme  a  catch. 

2  Cf.  Andocides,  3,  8,  Sia  Meyapeas  noXe^fjo-avTes. 
8  Aristophanes,  Peace,  608-618  (B.  B.  Rogers). 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  loi 

How  many  things  do  escape   our  notice !     How   many 
years  was  it  since  Pheidias  met  his  troubles — would  it  be 

twelve,  or  fifteen,  or ?    However,  the  play  is  getting  on,  and 

no  one  would  wish  to  miss  it  just  to  calculate  a  date.  Modern 
scholars  cannot  quite  be  sure  of  the  exact  date  of  Pheidias' 
trial,  and  it  is  hardly  necessary  that  they  should  be.  Here 
is  an  entirely  new  account  of  the  war.  "  I  never  heard  of  it 
before."     "  Nor  I." 

However,  the  suggestion  has  been  taken  up  quite  seriously. 
Pericles,  according  to  Julius  Beloch  (to  whom  students  of 
history  are  indebted  for  much  that  is  better),  saw  the  storm 
coming  and  made  war  to  turn  it  in  another  direction.  Cleon 
and  the  extreme  Left  (if  one  may  borrow  a  useful  form  of 
political  speech  from  the  French  assembly)  had  begun  their 
attacks — on  the  outposts  so  far,  Pheidias,  Anaxagoras,  etc. 
Pericles  saw  his  danger ;  so,  when  the  Corc3n-aean  alliance 
was  offered,  involving  war  as  it  did,  he  secured  that  it  was 
.  accepted ;  and  then  he  worked  steadily  for  a  breach,  seizing 
first  the  opportunity  offered  by  the  Poteidaian  affair,  and 
then  standing  out  about  the  Megarian  decree.  The  war  was 
sure  to  come  at  some  time,  Beloch  holds  ;  that  it  came  precisely 
when  it  did,  was  the  work  of  Pericles.  The  moment  was  not 
a  favourable  one  ;  one -third  of  the  available  forces  were  away 
in  Thrace,  and  every  year  of  peace  would  be  an  inestimable 
gain  for  Athens  and  for  Greece.  Pericles  knew  all  this — and 
chose  war,  because  it  suited  him,  convinced,  of  course,  that 
Athens  would  win,  because  she  could  outlast  her  enemies. 
But  the  best  issue  to  the  war  could  only  be  a  dull  peace  or  the 
status  quo.^  Beloch  further  holds,  or  held,  that  Pericles  mis- 
managed the  war  itself.  He  might  have  held  the  passes  of 
the  Geraneia  range,  though,  with  the  Boeotians  in  his  rear, 
this  might  have  involved  great  risk.  He  might  further  have 
attempted  a  bold  offensive,  supported  by  a  democratic  pro- 
paganda in  the  Peloponnesus  and  Boeotia.  It  would  have 
been  a  venture,  but,  as  Alcibiades  saw  later  on,  it  was  the  only 
way  to  victory.  Pericles'  war-policy  required  a  more  glitter- 
ing success  than  it  got,  and  when  the  plague  came  on  top  of 
a  dull  and  uninspired  war,  the  storm  broke,  as  Thucydides 
tells  us. 

1  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  (ed.  i),  i.  pp.  51. "5 -51 8. 


102  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

These  views  are  not  generally  accepted.  The  conduct 
of  the  war  was  indeed  dull  and  wearing,  but  nothing  else  was 
possible.  The  sea  was  the  Athenian  element,  and  Pericles,  as 
Beloch  sees,  could  not  count  on  his  land  forces  beating  the 
Spartan  and  Boeotian  hoplites  in  the  field.  It  was  the  Spartan 
strategy  to  force  such  a  battle,^  and  the  hot-heads  in  Athens 
wished  it.;  Pericles  refused  it  altogether — even  Plataea  was 
allowed  to  fall.^  Nor  does  the  suggestion  of  a  democratic 
propaganda  seem  a  very  good  one.  The  connexion  with 
democratic  Argos,  advocated  by  Alcibiades  and  carried  through 
by  him,  had  never  really  helped  Athens,  and  did  not  now. 
Democratic  plots  in  Megara  and  Boeotia  were  tried  in  the  first 
ten  years  of  the  war,  as  readers  of  Thucydides  remember,  but 
they  miscarried.^  Pericles'  war-policy  was  to  be,  as  Thucydides 
represents  it,  an  inglorious  one  ;  it  was  to  lay  a  great  sacrifice 
on  the  country  population,  and  to  strain  to  the  utmost  the 
nation's  confidence  in  its  leader.^ 

It  is  on  Pericles'  conduct  of  the  war  that  another  brilliant 
theory  is  shipwrecked.  Mr.  Cornford  maintains  that  Pericles 
was  pushed  from  behind  into  the  war,  by  people  who  had 
other  aims  than  his.  "Sicily  was  in  view  from  the  first. 
Not  in  Pericles'  view.  .  .  .  Pericles  did  not  want  to  conquer 
Sicily,  but  some  other  people  did ;  and  they  were  the  people 
who  forced  on  Pericles  the  violent  measures  against  Megara." 
These  people  were  the  trading  interests  down  in  the  Peiraieus, 
and  Thucydides  never  saw  through  their  game  ;  so  to  him 
"  the  vSicilian  enterprise  was  an  irrelevant  diversion."  ^    The 

1  Grundy,  Thuc.  p.  333,  says  the  forcing  of  such  a  battle  was  practi- 
cally their  whole  design. 

^  If  the  open  country  of  Attica  was  in  any  case  to  be  aba.ndoned  to 
Spartan  raids,  there  could  have  been  little  use  in  holding  a  fortress  at 
the  foot  of  one  of  the  passes.  Hence  Plataea  was  not  of  real  military 
significance  to  the  war  plans  of  Athens.  .  It  meant  more  to  Thebes. 

3  Thuc.  iv.  66-74,  89-101. 

*  Cf.  Busolt,  Gy.  Gesch.  iii.  p.  819. 

*  Thucydides  Mythi'storicus,  pp.  38,  51.  Residents  in  Cambridge 
who  heard  it  are  not  likely  to  forget  Dr.  Verrall's  brilliant  lecture  on 
The  Birds  in  1908,  in  which  he  suggested  that  the  play  was  an  attack 
on  -'  Palestinian  religion."  A  great  Cambridge  scholar  has  wickedly 
suggested  that  Dr.  Verrall's  theory  and  Mr.  Cornford's  may  be  readily 
combined — of  course,  the  war  was  contrived  in  that  synagogue  down 
in  the  Peiraieus. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  103 

drawback  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  first  fifteen  years  of 
the  war  that  is  inconsistent  with  the  account  given  by  Thucy- 
dides  of  Pericles'  motives.  There  were  people  who  dreamed 
of  conquering  Sicily  and  conquering  Carthage — so  Aristophanes 
joked  of  Hyperbolus  in  424  B.C./  and  Plutarch  says  the  dream 
goes  back  to  Pericles'  own  day ;  but,  after  all,  Thucydides' 
story  is  clear  and  consistent  and  intelligible. 

Athens  was  offered  the  alliance  with  Corcyra,  a  power  so 
far  neutral.  If  she  refused,  the  balance  of  power  would  at 
once  be  upset  by  Corinth  becoming  mistress  of  the  Corcyraean 
fleet.  She  accepted,  and  herself  upset  the  balance  of  power  ; 
for  now  the  Corinthians  and  their  allies  were  at  a  disadvantage. 
Pericles  must  have  foreseen  this,  and  preferred  that,  if  the 
balance  were  to  be  upset,  the  advantage  should  fall  to  Athens. 
The  Corinthians  were  now  in  a  difficult  position — Athens  on 
the  gulf  on  the  eastern  side,  Corcyra  controlling  the  sea-route 
on  the  west.  With  desperate  efforts  Corinth  got  Sparta  to 
move,  and  the  war  was  made.  Seven  years  before,  at  the 
time  of  the  siege  of  Samos,  440-439  B.C.,  Corinth  had  intervened 
and  stopped  Peloponnesian  aid  being  sent  to  the  Samians. 
Once  again  Corinth  was  the  decisive  factor,  and  this  time  for 
war ;  and  Corinth  was  as  little  enthusiastic  as  Sparta  about 
the  rights  of  Megara. 

War  then  was  voted  by  the  allies  in  the  autumn  of  432. 
As  military  operations  could  not  begin  before  the  next  spring, 
the  winter  was  spent  in  diplomacy,  not  to  secure  peace,  but  to 
discredit  Athens  with  the  Greek  world  at  large,  and  Pericles 
with  the  Athenians.  Various  demands  were  made,  relating 
to  Potidaea,  Aegina,  the  maternal  connexions  of  Pericles, 
above  all  the  Megarian  decree,^  and  finally  a  message  in  two 
sentences  :    "  The  Lacedaemonians  desire  to  maintain  peace, 

^Aristophanes,  Knights,  1303. 

2  The  stress  laid  on  this  for  their  own  purposes  by  the  Spartans  andr 
their  aUies  impressed  the  Athenian  mind — the  popular  mind  that  did 
not  go  deeply  into  things.  Cf.  Bury,  Ancient  Greek  Historians,  pp. 
95-99  ;  Busolt,  Gr.  Gesch.  iii.  817.  Mr.  E.  M.  Walker  quotes  a  saying 
of  Greville's  that  the  secrets  of  cabinets  are  known  only  to  the  man  in 
the  street.  In  our  days  the  Opposition  newspapers  always  seem  to 
know  them  best.  The  autumn  and  winter  of  19 14- 15  gave  many 
illustrations  of  how  readily  the  popular  mind  will  believe  things  and  how 
independent  it  can  be  of  evidence. 


104  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  peace  there  may  be  if  you  will  restore  independence  to  the 
Hellenes."  There  were  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  city 
communities  comprised  in  the  Athenian  Empire.  The  demand 
was  a  clever  one — a  much  better  stroke  than  the  Megarian, 
and  of  far  wider  appeal.^  How  little  it  meant  was  seen  in  421, 
when  Sparta  made  peace  and  forgot  the  autonomy  of  all 
Greeks,  and  again  after  404,  when  "  the  first  day  of  Greek 
freedom  "  ^  opened  a  period  of  disillusionment.  For  the 
present,  however,  as  Thucydides  says,  "  the  feeling  of  mankind 
was  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  Lacedaemonians  ;  for  they  pro- 
fessed to  be  the  liberators  of  Hellas.  Cities  and  individuals 
were  eager  to  assist  them  to  the  utmost,  both  by  word  and 
deed.  .  .  .  For  the  general  indignation  against  the  Athenians 
was  intense  ;  some  were  longing  to  be  delivered  from  them, 
others  fearful  of  falling  under  their  sway."  ^ 

Pericles  was  prepared.  He  recognized  the  twofold  weakness 
of  the  enemy,  who  lacked  ships  and  sailors,  for  one  thing,  and, 
for  another,  money.*  He  also  saw  their  strength,  and  resolved 
to  have  no  battle  on  land.  Certain  principles  Thucydides  repre- 
sents him  to  have  emphasized — no  surrender  to  the  Pelopon- 
nesians ;  ^  the  abandonment  of  the  land,  but  "  keep  a  watch 
over  the  city  and  the  sea,"  as  if  Athens  were  in  fact  an  island  ;  ' 
no  new  acquisition  of  empire  ; '  and  a  firm  hand  on  the  allies.* 

His  plan  of  action  we  have  already  seen.  He  saw  that 
the  twin-fortress  of  Athens  and  the  Peiraieus  could  not  be 
taken,  nor  even  menaced,  from  the  land.  The  Spartans  and 
their  allies  had  in  the  past  been  notoriously  weak  in  siege 
operations,  and  even  in  this  war  the  small  inland  town  of 
Plataea  was  their  one  success.  Meanwhile  men  live  by  bread, 
and  Athens  held  the  wheat-route  from  the  Black  Sea.  To 
secure  the  western  grain  trade  embassies  were  sent  to  the 
islands  near  the  Peloponnese — Corcyra,  Cephallenia,  Acarnania, 
and  Zacynthus,  with  the  aim  of  "  completely  surrounding 
the  Peloponnese  with  war."  ^    Accordingly  we  find  in  the 

^  This  demand  was  obviously  not  so  available  an  explanation  of  the 
war  for  the  peace  party  ;  they  could  not  push  peace  at  this  cost.  The 
Megarian  decree  was  a  better  subject  for  their  emphasis. 

2  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  23.  *  Thuc.  ii.  8. 

*  Thuc.  i.  142,  6,  and  i.  141,  5.  ^  Thuc.  i.  140,  i. 

^  Thuc.  i.  143,  5  ;  cf.  ii.  62.  '  Thuc.  i.  144,  i. 

^  Thuc.  ii.  13  ;  cf.  ii.  63.  »  Thuc.  ii.  7. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  105 

early  years  of  the  war,  where  there  is  any  policy  beyond 
mere  raiding  and  endurance,  that  the  active  operations  of  both 
parties  centre  about  the  Corinthian  gulf.  To  maintain  an 
effective  blockade  even  with  steamships  is  hard  ;  it  was  very 
difficult  for  the  Athenians,^  but  by  429  they  compelled  the 
Peloponnesian  allies  to  take  action  in  the  gulf,  with  the  result 
that  Phormio  won  two  brilliant  victories  for  Athens.  As  to 
Attica,  Pericles  refused  to  allow  a  battle  at  all,  or  even  for  a 
while  a  meeting  of  the  Assembly.  Cleon  flung  himself  at  him  ; 
the  comic  poets  wrote  songs  and  devised  taunts  against  him  ; 
but  nothing  moved  him.  The  first  year  of  the  war,  if  inglorious, 
still  was  not  unsatisfactory.  The  enemy  had  cut  down  trees 
in  Attica  ;  the  fleet  of  Athens  had  made  raids  on  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus ;  and  Athens  could  keep  it  up  longer. 

As  we  have  already  had  to  glance  more  than  once  at  the 
Peloponnesian  programme,  it  need  not  keep  us  so  long.  Thucy- 
dides,  in  a  series  of  speeches,  lets  us  see  a  good  deal  of  the 
Spartan  character — the  slowness  of  thought — the  general 
preference  for  ignorance  of  the  world  outside — the  inertia  that 
"  let  the  Mede  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  before  they  were 
ready,"  that  disappoints  the  hopes  of  all  who  count  on  Spartan 
help — "  the  old-time  ways,"  quite  out  of  date  by  now,  if  the 
Corinthian  speaker  is  to  be  trusted.  King  Archidamos  was 
against  immediate  war — ^he  saw  what  it  meant,  and  how  un- 
prepared they  were  ;  ^  but  the  vote  went  against  him,  "  not 
to  allow  the  Athenians  to  become  greater."  ^ 

Archidamos  was  right.  They  had  neither  fleet  nor  men 
to  match  the  Athenians  ;  and  whatever  might  be  said  before 
or  after  the  event  about  borrowing  the  treasures  of  Delphi  and 
outbidding  the  Athenians  with  higher  pay  for  their  foreign 
sailors,  there  was  little  attempt  at  this  till  after  Syracuse.* 
Even  then,  crippled  as  she  was,  Athens  from  time  to  time 
swept  the  Peloponnesian  fleet  off  the  sea,  till  it  is  plain,  from 

^  To  blockade  the  long  coastline  of  the  Peloponnesus,  with  all  its 
headlands  and  bays,  and  the  winds  and  currents  that  play  round  them, 
and  to  do  it  without  a  friendly  port  at  all  near,  was  a  very  dif&cult  task 
for  a  fleet  of  sailing  ships,  which  could  carry  little  water  and  were  not 
designed  for  long  periods  on  the  open  sea  ;  compare  complaints  of 
ApoUodorus,  c.  Polycl,  22,  23,  on  the  hardships  of  riding  at  anchor 
in  storm.     See  Chapter  X.  p.  331. 

2  Thuc.  i.  80-85.  ^  Thuc.  i.  86.  *  Thuc.  i.  121,  3. 


io6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Cyrus'  caution  to  Lysander/  that  the  Persians  grew  tired  of 
paying  for  fleets  to  be  built  and  lost.  Archidamos  saw, 
according  to  Thucydides,  that  it  was  useless  to  ravage  Attica, 
so  long  as  the  Athenian  food  supply  came  by  sea.^  Twenty- 
three  years  later  his  son  and  successor  Agis  saw  from  Deceleia 
the  swarms  of  wheat  ships  running  into  the  Peiraieus,  and  said 
it  was  no  use  to  cut  off  the  Athenians  from  the  land,  if  they 
could  also  not  cut  them  off  from  the  source  of  that  sea-borne 
wheat. ^  It  was  not  till  Lysander  had  achieved  this,  that 
Athens  fell.  But  it  was  out  of  the  question  in  432.  The  only 
real  chance  lay  in  some  fatal  Athenian  blunder,  as  Pericles 
said. 

Archidamos  was  an  old  man.  He  had  been  king  of  Sparta 
when  the  great  earthquake  shook  down  every  house  but  five, 
when  crags  fell  from  Taygetus,  and  great  chasms  opened  in  the 
earth,  when  the  Helots  sprang  into  revolt,  and  when  he  himself 
saved  the  Spartan  nation  by  sounding  "  To  arms  !  "  so  that 
when  the  Helots  came  to  plunder  the  wrecked  five  villages, 
the  men  of  Sparta  were  armed  and  in  battle  order,  waiting  for 
them.*  The  fight  with  the  Helots  for  Messenia  had  been  long 
and  difficult.  The  old  man  knew  where  Sparta  stood,  and  how 
she  stood — a  handful  of  Spartiates  amid  a  hostile  population, 
fewer  than  at  the  time  of  the  great  revolt,  perhaps  one  in 
sixteen ;  and  the  Helots  were  "  a  fierce  and  not  a  docile  race." 
"  The  Helots,"  wrote  Aristotle,  "  have  often  attacked  the 
Laconians,  for  they  are  always  on  the  look  out  as  it  were  for 
any  disaster  that  may  befall  them."  ^  "  Most  of  the  Spartan 
institutions  have  at  all  times  been  designed  to  secure  them 
against  the  Helots."  ^  In  spite  of  Plutarch's  fine  phrase  about 
Sparta  preferring  law-abiding  citizens  to  the  rule  over  all 
Greece,  it  was  probably  the  Helot  peril  that  dictated  her 
abandonment  of  the  headship  of  Greece  after  the  Persian  War.' 
Even  now  she  was  not  safe,  and  victory  over  Athens,  involving 
rule  over  the  Greek  world,  might  be  as  dangerous  as  defeat. 

1  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  i,  14.  ^  Thuc.  i.  81. 

3  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  i,  35.  *  Plut.  Cimon,  16. 

^  Aristotle,  Politics,  ii.  9,  §  2,  p.  1269  a. 

®  Thuc.  iv.  80.     There  is,  of  course,  a  variant  translation,  which  has 
strong  support — perhaps  more  among  grammarians  than  historians. 
'  See  Chapter  II.  p.  47. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  107 

Thus  the  unimaginative  conservative  habit  and  the  vivid 
sense  of  ever-present  danger  at  home  combined  to  make  Sparta 
"  more  shy  of  war  than  any  other  state  of  importance — except 
England  in  the  nineteenth  century."  ^ 

But  Corinth  had  turned  the  scale,  and  it  was  to  be  war. 
Athens  was  growing  too  strong,  and  Sparta  had  been  brought 
to  see  it  at  last.  Some  modern  historians  hold  that  Athens 
had  been  stronger  in  446  than  she  was  in  432,  but  an  analysis 
of  her  position  confirms  Thucydides.  At  the  early  date  she 
held  more,  it  is  true,  but  her  hold  was  precarious,  as  the  year 
446  proved.  Land-possessions  were  a  danger  to  her.  But 
now  she  was  rid  of  them  and  held  an  empire  everywhere 
accessible  to  her  fleet — an  empire,  of  islands  actual  or  virtual, 
divided  into  fragments  by  the  sea,  which  the  Athenian  fleet 
ruled.2  And  the  alliance  with  the  great  maritime  island- 
power  of  the  West  promised  still  further  aggrandizement.  So 
Sparta  went  to  war.  "  At  that  time  the  youth  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesus and  the  youth  of  Athens  were  numerous  ;  and  their 
inexperience  made  them  eager  for  war."  ^  "  At  that  time  " — 
the  words  suggest  the  contrast  which  the  historian  lived  to  see  ; 
the  numbers  were  thinned  ;  the  experience  of  war  was  grim, 
and  the  spirit  and  enthusiasm  flagged  before  the  end. 

"  Neither  side  meant  anything  small,"  Thucydides  says. 
Yet  we  have  seen  how  unprepared  Sparta  and  her  allies  were. 
They  put,  Plutarch  says,  an  army  of  sixty  thousand  men  into 
Attica,  to  ravage  it.  They  tried  to  secure  command  of  the 
Western  waters  and  to  break  the  Athenian  blockade,  not  very 
successfully.  They  destroyed  Plataea,  making  a  great  siege 
of  a  small  town.  But  their  fleet  was  poor,  miscellaneous,  and 
ill-manned ;  and,  as  for  improving  it,  "  War,"  said  King 
Archidamos,  *  "  is  a  matter  of  finance  ;  and  we  have  no  money  m 
our  common  chest,  and  we  are  not  very  ready  at  paying  it  out 
of  our  private  stores."  A  broken  inscription,  inaccurately 
copied,  survives  to  tell  of  contributions  to  the  war-funds,  but 

^  So  Eduard  Meyer,  some  years  before  1914.     ' 

2  The  Athenian  Ohgarch's  Ath.  Rep.  2,  2.  A  rather  different  view 
from,  that  given  above,  in  Grundy,  Thuc.  p.  323  f. 

3  Thuc.  ii.  8,  I. 

*  Thuc.  i.  83,  2,  and  80,  4.  Aristotle  noted  the  same  thing  about 
Sparta,  a  century  later,  Pol.  ii.  9,  36,  p.  12716:  --They  are  bad  at 
paying  eisphora  (war- tax)." 


io8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  only  contributors  whose  names  are  legible  are  the  Melians 
and  two  private  persons.^  The  Spartan  plan  for  the  war  was 
invasion,  with  the  war-cry  of  "  Greek  freedom."  ^ 

The  war-cry  was  a  good  one,  and  "  they  expected  within 
a  few  years  to  destroy  the  Athenian  Empire."  ^  AH  Greece 
was  excited,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  "  the  feeling  of  mankind 
was  strongly  on  the  Spartan  side."  ^  The  Athenian  allies,  as 
Athens  knew  not  less  well  than  Sparta,  wished  to  be  inde- 
pendent— this  passion  was  the  greatest  danger  of  Athens,  the 
chief  hope  of  Sparta.  It  was  emphasized  by  the  Corinthian 
speaker.^  Before  the  war  began,  Mitylenaean  envoys  had 
been  asking  Spartan  aid  for  a  revolt  against  Athens.^  The 
speech  which  Thucydides  attributes  to  the  later  Mitylenaean 
embassy  at  Sparta  in  428  sets  out  what  the  allies  felt.  But 
really  no  further  evidence  is  necessary,  when  we  remember 
how,  on  the  failure  of  the  Sicilian  expedition,  when  the  Athenian 
fleet  ceased  to  be,  "  all  Hellas  was  stirred  .  .  .  but  none 
showed  more  alacrity  than  the  subjects  of  the  Athenians,  who 
were  everywhere  willing  even  beyond  their  power  to  revolt,"  ' 
and  did  revolt.  The  Greek,  says  Mr.  Grundy,^  "  sought  for 
the  least  common  measure  in  life,  the  smallest  form  of  associa- 
tion in  which  he  could  realize  his  individualism  to  the  fullest 
extent  which  was,  humanly  speaking,  possible."  The  cities 
wished  to  be,  as  a  Spartan  phrase  puts  it,  avrovofioi  Kal 
avTOTToXLe^  rav  avTcbv  e')(ovT6^ — make  their  own  laws,  be  each 
a  city  to  itself,  have  each  their  own  land.®  To  this  verb  avro- 
vofielcFOat,  so  much  in  the  air,  so  much  on  the  lips  of  Spartan 
envoys,  Pericles  in  432  added  an  adverbial  clause  which  hit  off 
the  actual  situation  there  and  then  in  the  Peloponnese,  and 
what  actually  befell  when  the  Athenian  Empire  came  to  pieces 
— it  was  Tolfi  AaKeBat/jiovLoi'i  e7riT7;Setci)9,  an  "  autonomy  in  the 
interests  of  Lacedaemon."  ^^  So  it  proved,  as  the  Greeks 
were  to  learn  from  harmost  and  satrap,  and  more  still  when 

1  C.I.G.  15 1 1.     Hicks,  Manual  No.  43  (not  in  second  edition). 

2  Thuc.  i.  139.  2  Thuc.  v.  14,  3. 

*  Thuc.  ii.  8.  ^  Thuc.  i.  122. 

*  Thuc.  iii.  2,  i.  Cf.  Aristophanes,  Peace,  619,  when  the  cities  saw 
you  start  snarling  at  one  another,  for  fear  of  tribute  they  began  to 
bribe  the  Laconian  leaders. 

'  Thuc.  viii.  2.  ^  Thucydides  and  his  Age,  p.  171. 

*  Treaty  in  Thuc.  v.  79.  i"  Thuc.  i.  144,  2. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  109 

Antalkidas  brought  down  his  Peace  from  the  King  in  387.  But 
that  was  still  a  long  way  off.  Meanwhile,  if  the  island  cities 
were  to  be  free  from  Athens,  a  navy  was  needed  to  put  the 
Athenian  fleet  out  of  action,  and  it  did  not  exist ;  so  the  war- 
cry  remained  a  fine  phrase.  It  is  significant  that  Brasidas 
used  it  with  effect  in  424,^  though  Sparta  was,  as  he  must 
have  known,  on  the  point  of  dropping  "  the  liberation  of  ail 
the  Greeks  "  for  good  and  all,^  and  had  aheady  proposed  to 
Athens  a  joint  control  of  the  Greek  world. ^ 

The  whole  Spartan  war-policy  failed.  The  invasions  of 
Attica  merely  proved  the  signal  strength  of  the  twin-fortress 
with  command  of  the  sea.  Sparta  came  out  of  the  war 
humbled,  and  did  not  regain  credit  till  the  blundering  cunning 
of  Alcibiades  had  involved  Athens  in  the  Argive  alHance  and 
the  defeat  at  Mantineia.*  Even  then  it  needed  that  to  the  foUy 
of  the  Syracusan  expedition  there  should  be  added  the  Spartan 
fortification  of  Deceleia,  the  general  revolt  of  the  Athenian 
allies,  and  the  steady  subsidies  of  Persia — yes,  and  the  final 
imbecility  of  the  Athenian  generals  at  Aegospotami  as  the 
crowning  touch — before  the  power  of  Athens  was  broken. 

There  were,  it  appears,  throughout  the  whole  struggle  a 
war-party  and  a  peace-party  in  Sparta,  but  it  is  in  general  hard 
to  follow  their  relations.  In  Athens  it  is  otherwise,  for  here 
life  was  more  articulate.  We  have  seen  something  of  the 
grounds  and  policy  of  Pericles  in  making  war,  and  we  may 
now  pass  over  to  the  other  party  as  we  come  to  know  it  in  the 
years  after  his  death — the  party  that  struggled  for  peace  against 
the  class  created,  more  or  less,  by  Pericles  himself,  which 
owed  its  very  livelihood  to  the  arts  of  war  and  empire. 

If  we  may  borrow  once  more  the  French  terms,  and  group 
the  Athenians  as  Right,  Left,  and  Centre,  the  Peace  party  will 
range  in  the  main  from  the  Extreme  Right  to  the  Right  Centre. 
Three  or  four  distinct  classes  are  to  be  recognized  within  the 
group.  There  are,  first  of  all,  the  country  people.  "  The 
denios,"  says  the  bitter  oligarch,  "  knows  quite  weU  that  the 
enemy  will  burn  nothing  that  belongs  to  it,  nor  cut  down  any 
tree  of  its  owning,  so  it  lives  free  from  fear  ;  "  they  store  their 

^  Thuc.  iv.  85.  ^  The  truce  of  spring,  423. 

*  Thuc.  iv.  20,  4.  *  Thuc.  v.  75,  3. 


no  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

own  goods  on  islands,  and  can  afford  to  look  on  at  the  ravaging 
of  Attica,  for  they  know  that,  if  they  take  pity  on  Attica, 
they  will  pay  for  it  in  the  loss  of  advantages  of  their  own  ;  and 
he  does  not  exactly  blame  Demos — Demos  knows  how  to  look 
after  himself.^  What  the  country  people  had  to  suffer  is  set 
out  with  great  vigour  by  Aristophanes  ;  they  formed  the  kernel 
of  the  troops,  and  they  had  too  much  of  it.  He  blames  the 
taxiarchs  for  injustice  in  calling  out  men  to  serve  : 

Making  up  the  lists  unfairly,  striking  out  and  putting  down 
Names  at  random.     'Tis  to-morrow  that  the  soldiers  leave  the  town  ; 
One  poor  wretch  has  brought  no  victuals,  for  he  knew  not  he  must  go. 
Till  he  on  Pandion's  statue  spied  the  list  and  found  'twas  so, 
Reading  there  his  name  inserted;   off  he  scuds  with  aspect  wry. 
This  is  how  they  treat  the  farmers.* 

Farms  suffered,  homes  were  burnt,  trees  were  cut  down, 
and  trees  meant  vines  and  olives.  The  olive  does  not  bear  a  full 
crop  for  sixteen  or  eighteen  years,  and  it  is  at  its  best  between 
forty  and  sixty. ^  As  olive  oil  and  wine  were  the  two  agricultural 
staples  of  Attica,  the  felling  of  such  trees  meant  poverty  for 
a  lifetime  to  their  owners.  Plato  in  his  Republic  forbade  the 
practice  of  cutting  down  the  trees  of  Hellenic  enemies,*  but,  as 
Cicero  suggested,  this  world  was  not  after  all  Plato's  Republic.^ 
Thucydides,  as  well  as  Aristophanes,  dwells  on  the  furious 
indignation  of  the  Acharnians  in  particular  at  the  devastation 
of  their  deme — "  they  were  in  their  own  estimation  no  small 
part  of  the  state,"  he  says,  a  little  unkindly. 
j  ,':  Along  with  the  country  people  stood  the  well-to-do  classes, 
at  one,  in  the  main,  on  the  peace  question,  but  not  a  homo- 
geneous group.  "  It  is  the  better  classes,  ol  BwaTcoTaroi 
Twu  TToXtTwy,  on  whom  the  heaviest  burdens  are  apt  to  fall," 
says  Thucydides.^  They  had  to  outfit  triremes  and  sail  on 
them  as  trierarchs,  and  they  had  to  pay  the  eisphora,  the 
war  tax  levied  on  property — and  all  in  addition  to  the  liturgies 
of  peace,  the  outfit  of  choruses,  feasts,  etc'     Every  dtinocracy 

1  Athenian  Oligarch,  Ath.  Rep.  2,  14-20.     Cf.  Chapter  II.  pp.  53-55. 
^Aristophanes,  Peace,  iiygi. 

3  I  owe  this  and  much  else  to  Mr.  Zimmern's  admirable  book.  The 
Greek  Commonwealth. 

*  Plato,  Rep.  V.  471.       «  To  Atticus,  ii.  1,8.       «  Thuc.  viii.  48,  i, 
'  See  further  Chapter  X.  pp.  329-332. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  iii 

is  sooner  or  later  familiar  with  the  bitter  cry  of  the  wealthy 
taxpayer,  but  in  Athens  taxation  had  some  look  of  being  really 
unfair.^  Some  of  the  well-to-do  were  oligarchs,  in  principle — 
though,  really,  oligarch  and  aristocrat  are  vague  terms  ;  they 
believed  at  least  in  a  limited  democracy,  and  the  day  came 
when  they  tried  it — a  democracy  of  so  many  thousand  at  most, 
all  qualified  to  serve  the  state  in  arms.^  Some  went  much 
further,  and  were  "  Spartan-mad,"  iXaKcovofidvow  : 

Long-haired,  half-starved,  unwashed,  Socratified, 
With  scy tales  in  their  hands.* 

"What  /  hear,"  says  Socrates  in  the  Gorgias,^  "is  this,  that 
Pericles  has  made  the  Athenians  lazy  and  cowardly  and 
talkative  and  greedy,  by  establishing  first  the  system  of  fees." 
"  You  hear  all  that,"  rejoins  Callicles,  "from  the  gentry  with 
the  broken  ears  " — for  boxing  was  a  Laconism  of  the  day. 
They  formed  themselves  into  clubs,  "  with  a  view  to  offices 
and  lawsuits."^  We  cannot  exactly  say  that  they  took  the 
oath  used  by  their  like  in  some  cities,  according  to  Aristotle  : 
"  I  will  be  hostile  to  the  people  {demos)  and  plan  it  all  the 
ill  I  can  "  ;  but  they  were  ready  enough  to  negotiate  with 
Sparta,  not  merely  from  patriotism  like  a  Nicias,  but  with 
treacherous  intent,  as  appeared  in  the  affairs  of  the  Four 
Hundred  and  the  Thirty.  The  "  young  men  "  of  those  sinister 
times  were  more  or  less  of  this  school,  and  to  some  extent  the 
knights.^ 

These  elements  formed  the  permanent  strength  of  the 
party  against  war.  Beside  them  there  would  be  the  medley  of 
people  who  turn  elections  and,  in  our  country,  especially  by- 
elections — the  moderates,  and  the  opportunists,  the  anti-war 
democrats,  and  all  the  people  who  vote  on  side-issues,  and  love 
to  be  on  the  safe  side,  the  winning  side.  There  were  also  some 
with  really  wider  and  larger  ideas,  forerunners  of  Isocrates  and 
a  later  day,  men  with  Panhellenic  sentiments,  whose  ideas  found 

^  Cf.  the  Athenian  Oligarch's  Ath.  Rep.  and  Xen.  Symp.  4,  30. 

^  Thuc.  viii.  97,  i. 

^Aristophanes,  Birds,  1281. 

*  Gorg.  5 1 5  E, 

^  Cf.  Thuc.  viii.  54,  3,  with  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  $77. 

'  The  veavicTKoi  ;  Thuc.  viii.  69,  4.     Cf.  also  Xen,  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  23. 
See  p.  187,  note. 


112  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

a  voice  from  time  to  time,  as  in  the  Peace  of  Aristophanes,  where 
the  hero  addresses  his  prayer  to  Peace  : 

When  our  fightings  are  stayed,  and  our  tumults  allayed, 

We  will  hail  thee  a  Lady  for  ever  : 
And  O  put  an  end  to  the  whispers  of  doubt. 

Those  wonderful  clever 
Ingenious  suspicions  we  bandy  about  ; 
And  solder  and  glue  the  Hellenes  anew 

With  the  old-fashioned  true 
Elixir  of  love  and  attemper  our  mind 
With  thoughts  of  each  other  more  genial  and  kind.^ 

The  same  idea,  carried  to  a  further  point,  reappears  in  the 
Lysistrata.^  Using  a  simile  from  wool,  the  poet  pleads  for 
mingling 

All  in  one  basket  of  unity, 
Citizens,  visitors,  strangers  and  sojourners. 
All  the  entire  undivided  community. 

Yes,  and  the  cities  also,  colonies  as  they  originally  were  of 
Athens,  and  weaving  all  into  one  web,  for  a  cloak  for  Demos. 
But  Demos  was  not  shrewd  enough  to  take  the  hint,  or  perhaps 
it  came  too  late ;  or,  again,  people  whose  ambition  was  to  be 
autopolitai,  citizens  of  themselves,  might  not  have  wished  to  be 
woven  into  a  cloak  for  Demos. 

Meantime  Demos  had  other  fancies  in  apparel.  "  Being 
bare,"  says  Trygaios  in  the  Peace,  Demos  took  up  Hyperbolus 
to  gird  himself  with  : 

You  see,  he  deals  in  lamps  :    before  he  came 

We  all  were  groping  in  the  dark,  but  now 

His  lamps  may  give  our  council-board  some  light.^ 

It  was  to  the  successors  of  Pericles  that  Thucydides  attributed 
the  downfall  of  Athens.  They  were  the  products  of  the 
Athenian  theory  of  Democracy,  as  developed  by  Pericles. 

The  theory  presupposed  the  Athenian  people  meeting 
in  assembly  to  discuss  national  business.     But  the  Athenians 

1  Aristophanes,  Peace,  991-998 — a  prayer  as  chimerical  then  as  a 
similar  one  to-day  for  Europe  would  be  according  to  some  people.  But, 
if  history  has  lessons  for  us — let  us  think  them  out. 

2  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  580-586, 
*  Aristophanes,  Peace,  685-692, 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  113 

never  so  met.  Many  of  them  were  far  too  busy  at  the  Peiraieus 
to  go  up  to  the  city,  or  were  away  on  outlying  farms  through- 
out Attica.  Many  must  always  have  been  out  of  the  country 
on  trading  voyages,  and  constantly  large  numbers  on  naval 
and  military  expeditions.  The  Demos  never  really  met — only 
some  section  of  the  community.  But,  as  Aristotle  said,  there 
are  people  of  an  inferior  type,  because  their  life  is  inferior, 
since  there  is  no  room  for  moral  excellence  in  any  of  their 
employments — mechanics,  traders,  and  labourers.  People  of 
this  class  can  readily  come  to  the  Assembly,  because  they  are 
continually  moving  about  in  the  city  and  in  the  agora.  The 
Assembly  ought  not  to  meet  when  the  country  people  cannot 
come.  So  thought  Aristotle,^  but  it  did  meet.  It  seems  to 
have  been  only  as  a  rule  at  elections  that  the  voters  of  outljnug 
districts  took  the  trouble  to  make  themselves  felt. 

When  the  Assembly  met,  it  was  to  transact  business  with 
a  minimum  of  laws  of  procedure  and  a  maximum  of  freedom  to . 
act.  As  everybody  knows  who  has  served  on  a  committee,  a 
permanent  chairman  or  secretary  becomes  an  autocrat,  and  the 
Athenian  democracy  avoided  any  such  danger,  though  at  some 
cost.  As  the  Persian  said,  in  Herodotus'  story,  the  Demos 
comes  tumbling  and  pushing  into  business,  without  any  sense, 
just  like  a  stream  in  spate.^  There  is  some  truth  in  this,  for  a 
Greek  demos  knew  none  of  the  checks  which  we  suppose  to 
be  as  natural  as  democracy  itself.  There  was  obviously  no 
representative  system;  worse  still,  there  was  no  ministry,  no 
cabinet,  no  selected  and  tested  group  of  men  of  experience  jointly 
responsible  as  a  body  for  advice  or  action.  The  Generals  were, 
it  is  true,  a  board,  but  usually  a  divided  board.  Foreign  affairs 
would  have  to  be  discussed,  and  there  was  nothing  approach- 
ing a  foreign  office,  just  as  there  was  no  diplomatic  service. 
Embassies  were  sent  ad  hoc,  as  we  say,  and  in  the  fourth  century 
travelling  actors  were  sometimes  available ;  but  as  a  rule  the 
Ecclesia  would  have  to  depend  on  its  own  knowledge  of  foreign 
conditions  and  situations,  acquired  in  travel  or  trade,  or  picked 
up  somehow.^     When  moreover  we  remember  the  passions  of 

^  Aristotle,  Politics,  vi.  4,  13,  p.  1319a.  ^  Herodotus,  iii.  81. 

^  A  very  curious  illustration  is  the  story  of  the  arrival  of  the  bad 
news  from  Syracuse,  preserved  for  us  by  Plutarch,  Nicias,  30.  Booker 
Washington,  in  his  Up  from  Slavery,  alludes  to  the  curious  ways  in 


114  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

a  Greek  people — "every  multitude,"  said  Polybius,  "  is  fickle 
and  full  of  lawless  desires,  unreasoning  anger  and  violent 
passion,"  1  and  Thucydides  preserves  stories  enough  of  Athens 
to  confirm  the  statement,  even  if  he  did  put  the  other  side 
in  Pericles'  speech — we  can  begin  to  realize  the  want  of  unity 
of  mind,  the  want  of  responsibility,  that  marked  the  Ecclesia. 
The  government  of  Athens,  says  Eduard  Meyer,  was  really  an 
anarchy  down  to  Eubulus.  Nobody  was  responsible  for  advising 
the  nation  ;  anybody  could  speak  ;  nobody  need.  If  a  man 
did  speak,  if  he  moved  a  motion  and  it  was  carried,  and  mischief 
came  of  it,  he  was  liable  to  suffer  for  it ;  hence  silence  had  a 
ready  excuse  and  came  naturally  sometimes.  Here  is  an 
illustration  from  Demosthenes,  the  story  of  what  happened 
when  Philip  suddenly  took  Elateia,  and  established  himself 
south  of  Thermopylae. 2 

"  It  was  evening,  and  one  had  come  to  the  Prytaneis  with 
the  news  that  Elateia  had  been  taken.  Upon  this  they  rose 
from  supper  without  delay  ;  some  of  them  drove  the  occupants 
out  of  the  booths  in  the  market-place,  and  set  fire  to  the 
wicker-work  ;  others  sent  for  the  generals  and  summoned  the 
trumpeter  ;  and  the  city  was  full  of  commotion.  On  the 
morrow,  at  break  of  day,  the  Prytaneis  summoned  the  Council 
to  the  Council-Chamber,  while  you  made  your  way  to  the 
Assembly  ;  and  before  the  Council  had  transacted  its  business 
and  passed  its  draft-resolution,  the  whole  people  was  seated 
on  the  hillside  (on  the  Pnyx).  And  now,  when  the  Council 
had  reported  the  intelligence  which  they  had  received,  and  had 
brought  forward  the  messenger,  and  he  had  made  his  state- 
ment, the  herald  proceeded  to  ask,  '  Who  wishes  to  speak  ?  ' 
But  no  one  came  forward ;  and  though  the  herald  repeated 
the  question  many  times,  still  no  one  rose,  though  all  the 
generals  were  present,  and  all  the  orators,  and  the  voice  of 
their  country  was  calling  for  some  one  to  speak  for  her  de- 
liverance." 

And  yet  for  twenty-seven  years  this  Ecclesia  managed  the 

whicli  negroes  throughout  the  South  picked  up  war  news  and  emanci- 
pation rumours,  ahead  of  the  white  people. 

1  Polybius,  vi.  56. 

2  Demosthenes,  de  Corona,  169,  170  (Pickard- Cambridge).  The 
firing  of  the  wicker-work  may  be  an  alarm  signal. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  115 

Peloponnesian  War,  and  for  many  more  years  it  had  managed 
and  still  did  manage  the  complicated  business  of  an  empire 
of  two  hundred  and  fifty  cities,  and  did  it  all  so  weU,  that, 
but  for  a  number  of  signal  follies  that  a  man  might  count  on 
his  fingers,  the  war  would  have  been  successfully  ended  and 
the  empire  kept.  Alcibiades,  speaking  to  the  Spartans, 
declines  to  discuss  Democracy — "  about  admitted  folly,  there 
is  nothing  new  to  be  said."  ^  Yet  there  must  have  been 
somewhere  in  that  Assembly  an  amazing  amount  of  sheer  sense, 
business  capacity,  insight,  and  intelligence — not  to  speak  of 
real  knowledge  of  the  actual  conditions  of  the  Greek  world. 
From  478  to  405  it  was  the  ruling  force  in  the  Greek  world, 
and  drove  the  Persian  king  out  and  kept  him  out.  The 
Funeral  Speech  of  Pericles  must  represent  history  pretty  faith- 
fully after  all.  Alcibiades  tells  the  Spartans  that  it  is  evil 
demagogues  who  lead  the  people  astray,  but  that  again  is  a 
statement  that  will  bear  investigation. 

Cleon  is  of  course  the  most  famous  of  all  the  demagogues, 
thanks  to  Thucydides  and  Aristophanes,  and  we  have  already 
given  him  a  good  deal  of  attention.  Aristophanes  describes 
himself  in  two  plays  as  a  sort  of  Herakles  who  faced  the  monster, 
for  the  safety  of  Athens  and  the  islands,  but  in  the  description 
of  Cleon  as  monster,  perhaps  the  voice  only  is  authentic — "  the 
voice  of  a  cataract,  mother  of  destruction."  No  doubt  the 
flatterers  of  Cleon  are  also  taken  from  life.  But  Cleon  was  a 
significant  figure  in  history,  and,  apart  from  his  politics,  his 
personality  is  interesting.  Plutarch,  with  the  Athenaion 
Politeia  behind  him,  tells  us  that  Cleon  "  first  did  away  with 
the  decorum  of  the  hema,  and,  in  speaking  to  the  people,  would 
shout  and  pull  off  his  mantle,  and  slap  his  thigh,  and  pace  up 
and  down  as  he  talked  ;  it  was  he  who  taught  the  politicians 
that  cheapness  and  contempt  for  decency  that  soon  after 
ruined  everything."  ^  Once  he  made  the  Ecclesia  adjourn 
after  waiting  long  for  him — because  he  was  busy,  he  had  had 
a  sacrifice  and  was  entertaining  strangers  ;  and  the  Athenians 
laughed  and  adjourned.^  Aristophanes  says  they  listened  to  him 

Every  single  man  agape, 
Most  like  to  mussels  cooking  on  the  coals.* 

1  Thuc.  vi.  89,  6.  2  piut.  Nicias,  8,  3  ;    'A(9.  HoX.  28,  3. 

2  Plut.  Nicias,  7,  5.  *  Aristophanes,  Babylonians  Frag.  68. 


ii6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

There  was  force  and  character  about  the  man — violence, 
Thucydides  said — a  fine  strong  Jingo  accent — there  were  no 
impossibiHties  with  him  ;  the  generals  could  do  it  if  they  liked 
— he  could,  if  he  were  in  their  place  ;  and  so  on.  And,  as 
we  know,  he  did  it — once.  Of  course  he  was  accused  of  taking 
bribes  ;  ^  perhaps  he  did.  The  Greek  conscience  was  not 
very  nice  about  the  matter.  He  was  reckless,  ignorant,  and 
ill-informed,  and  this  was  where  he  made  his  mistakes.  He 
has  the  credit  of  being  no  friend  to  philosophy  and  the  refine- 
ment of  life,  but  he  was  not  at  all  a  worse  citizen  or  worse 
man  than  many  of  the  most  brilliant  of  the  new  school.  But 
he  was  vulgar,  and  that  was  unpardonable.  More  serious  still 
was  his  insistence  on  war,  which  made  him  a  danger  to  his 
country.  On  the  other  hand,  he  must  have  had  a  real  gift  for 
finance, 2  like  his  successor  a  decade  later,  the  fatal  Cleophon, 
another  hopeless  advocate  of  war  to  the  last,  when  every 
sane  mind  could  see  it  was  as  disastrous  as  it  was  impossible. 

The  most  fatal  figure  of  all  who  stood  on  the  hema  was 
no  lamp-seller  or  tanner  or  lyre-maker,  but  the  brilliant 
Alcibiades.  Eduard  Meyer  sums  up  his  amazing  youth,  by 
saying  that  from  boyhood  up  he  looked  on  himself  as  the 
Crown  Prince  of  Athens.  He  stood  in  a  peculiarly  close 
relation  to  Pericles  as  his  ward,  and  perhaps  there  is  no  recorded 
incident  of  a  most  varied  career  more  characteristic  than  the 
conversation  (recorded  or  most  happily  imagined  by  Xenophon) 
in  which  the  pupil  of  Socrates  leads  on  the  old  statesman  to 
discuss  law  and  its  nature.  The  youth  plays  Socrates  to  the 
life,  and  at  last  Pericles  ends  the  discussion  by  saying  :  "At 
your  age  we  used  to  be  clever  too,  in  such  questions.  It  was 
just  such  matters  we  used  to  handle  and  practise  our  wits  on, 
as  you  seem  to  be  doing."  "  How  I  wish,"  the  youth  rejoined, 
with  a  crowning  Alcibiadism,^  "  I  could  have  known  you  when 
you  were  at  your  cleverest,  Pericles  1".f  He  fascinated  his, 
countrymen  with  his  brilliance  and  his  audacity  and  clever- 

1  Aristophanes,  Ach.  5  ;  Knights,  834. 

2  Finance  was  the  perpetual  problem  of  Greek  democracies.  See 
Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  25  ;  see  also  Mr.  Zimmern's  Greek  Common- 
wealth, p.  208,  on  the  "  incredible  poverty  "  of  Greek  cities. 

3  Cf .  scholiast  on  Thuc.  vi.  18,  where  he  says  that  certain  phrases 

are  kot  ^AXKijSidbrjv. 

*  Xen.  Mem.  i.  2,  46. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  117 

ness,i  and  alienated  them.  The  popular  leaders  disliked  him, 
for  he  outshone  them  altogether,  and  they  worked  for  his  ruin, 
and  effected  it  twice,  and  each  time  the  consequences  to  Athens 
were  immediately  and  desperately  unhappy.  But  in  spite  of 
their  leaders,  the  people  could  not  get  him  out  of  their  minds. 
"  I  dare  say,"  says  Nicias,  addressing  the  Athenians, 
"  there  may  be  some  young  man  here  who  is  delighted  at 
holding  a  command,  and  the  more  so  because  he  is  too  young 
for  his  post ;  and  he,  regarding  only  his  own  interest,  may 
recommend  you  to  sail  [to  Sicily] ;  he  may  be  one  who  is  much 
admired  for  his  stud  of  horses,  and  wants  to  make  something 
out  of  his  command  which  will  maintain  him  in  his  extrava- 
gance." 2  And  so  forth,  about  the  colleague  already  elected 
to  co-operate  with  him  on  the  great  expedition.  The  young 
man  was  ready  with  a  reply.  ^ 

"  Those  doings  of  mine  for  which  I  am  so  much  cried  out 
against  are  an  honour  to  myself  and  to  my  ancestors,  and  a 
solid  advantage  to  my  country.  In  consequence  of  the  dis- 
tinguished manner  in  which  I  represented  the  State  at  Olympia, 
the  other  Hellenes  formed  an  idea  of  our  power  which  even 
exceeded  the  reality,  although  they  had  previously  imagined 
that  we  were  exhausted  by  war.  I  sent  into  the  lists  seven 
chariots — no  other  private  man  ever  did  the  like  ;  I  was  victor, 
and  also  won  the  second  and.fourth  prize  ;  and  I  ordered  every- 
thing in  a  style  worthy  of  my  victory.  The  general  sentiment 
honours  such  magnificence  ;  and  the  energy  which  is  shown 
by  it  creates  an  impression  of  power.  At  home,  again,  when- 
ever I  gain  eclat  by  providing  choruses,  or  by  the  performance 
of  some  other  public  duty,  although  the  citizens  are  naturally 
jealous  of  me,  to  strangers  these  acts  of  munificence  are  a  new 
argument  of  our  strength.  There  is  some  use  in  the  folly  of 
a  man  who  at  his  own  cost  benefits  not  only  himself,  but  the 
State." 

The  weak  point  in  Alcibiades  was  that  he  was  charlatan 
as  well  as  genius  ;  an  element  of  make-believe  can  be  traced 
through  his  whole  career.  He  was  not  so  sure  a  guide  as  he 
aimed  at  appearing  ;    he  did  not,  for  instance,  take  enough 

^  Plutarch  on  his  cleverness  in  adapting  himself  to  his  environment 
--  with  quicker  changes  than  a  chamaeleon  "  {Alcib.  23). 

2  Thuc.  vi.  12  (Jowett).  ^  jhuc.  vi.  16  (Jowett). 


ii8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

trouble  to  understand  the  real  relations  among  the  Peloponnesian 
powers,  and  so  he  involved  his  country  in  the  Argive  alliance 
and  the  defeat  at  Mantineia  in  418 — with  exactly  the  result 
he  was  working  to  avoid,  the  restoration  of  Spartan  prestige. 
The  Greeks  perhaps  were  less  sensitive  about  lying  than  we 
suppose  we  are,  so  that  the  series  of  tricks  by  which  he  carried 
through  his  disastrous  ideas  in  this  case  might  not  have  injured 
his  repute  at  home.^  Similar  adroitness  was  credited  to 
Themistocles,  to  Pericles,  and  to  Nicias  himself,  in  dealing 
with  the  Spartans.  If  Thucydides  is  right  in  his  statement 
that  Alcibiades  dreamed  he  might  be  conqueror  not  only  of 
Syracuse  but  of  Carthage,^  it  is  a  further  indication  of  impulse 
and  fancy  outrunning  insight,  though,  to  be  fair  to  him,  he 
was  not  the  onl}?  Greek  of  his  day  to  play  with  the  dream  of 
conquering  Carthage,^  nor  was  he  the  last.  With  Sicilian 
statesmen  and  adventurers  it  was  no  dream,  but  a  business, 
and  one  in  which,  after  putting  forth  all  their  powers,  all  alike 
failed.  There  may  have  been  generous  Panhellenic  sentiment 
in  the  thought,  but  it  should  never  have  come  within  the  range 
of  practical  politics  in  Athens — it  was  chimerical,  however 
desirable.  Plutarch  expands  the  dream  of  Alcibiades  to  include 
Libya  with  Carthage,  and  then  Italy,  and  finally  the  Pelo- 
ponnese.^ 

The  perplexing  episode  of  the  mutilation  of  the  Hermae 
gave  the  democrat  leaders  their  chance.  The  evidence  against 
Alcibiades  was  absurd,  except  for  a  people  in  panic,  but  it 
worked  out  in  his  ruin.  How  he  "  showed  them  he  was  still 
alive  "  is  familiar — in  Sparta  and  in  Sardis,  the  same  brilliant 
figure  captivating  dull  Spartan  royalty  and  the  adroit  Tissa- 
phernes  himself,  and  again  in  each  case  waking^  suspicion. 
After  that  came  further  triumphs — the  launching  first  and 
then  the  wrecking  of  the  oligarchy  of  the  Four  Hundred — and 
the  crowning  service  which  he  did  his  country  in  the  moment  of 

^  Plutarch,  it  is  true,  says  nobody  praised  his  method,  but  it  was 
a  great  achievement  to  spHt  the  Peloponnese  [Alcih.  15). 

^  Thuc.  vi.  15,  2. 

3  Cf .  Aristophanes,  Knights,  1303.  Hyperbolus  also  dreamed  of  it. 
Plut.  Pericles,  20,  3,  says  some  did,  even  in  Pericles'  time. 

*  Plut.  Alcib.  17  ;  probably  it  is  parody  that  has  come  down  some- 
how from  contemporary  enemies  of  Alcibiades  ;  of  these  there  were 
plenty. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  119 

her  supreme  division  against  herself.  The  sailors  at  Samos 
would  have  sailed  for  the  Peiraieus  and  added  civil  war  to 
'  war  with  Sparta  and  Syracuse  and  the  revolted  allies.  "  Then 
Alcibiades  appears  to  have  done  as  eminent  a  service  to  the 
state  as  any  man  ever  did.  For  if  the  Athenians  at  Samos 
in  their  excitement  had  been  allowed  to  sail  against  their 
fellow-citizens,  the  enemy  would  instantly  have  obtained 
possession  of  Ionia  and  the  Hellespont  " — and  the  Hellespont, 
as  was  seen  seven  years  later,  was  vital ;  it  meant  the  daily 
bread  of  all  Athens.  "  This  he  prevented,  and  at  that  moment 
no  one  else  could  have  restrained  the  multitude  ;  but  he  did 
restrain  them."  ^  So  he  regained  a  great  deal  of  his  old  hold 
on  the  Athenians,  but  the  old  suspicions  did  not  even  yet 
die — ^his  enemies  saw  to  that.  Did  he,  or  did  he  not,  wish  to 
be  tyrant  ?  ^  Did  his  friendship  with  Tissaphernes  point 
to  such  a  desire?  The  slight  defeat,  inflicted  on  his  pilot 
Antiochus  by  Lysander,  in  an  engagement  forbidden  by 
Alcibiades  himself,  was  used  to  secure  his  deposition,  and  he 
retired  to  a  voluntary  exile  in  a  castle  he  held  at  Bisanthe,  a 
place  better  known  in  our  days  as  Rodosto  ^  (Spring  407). 

Two  years  later  it  was  still  a  question  with  the  Athenians, 
what  to  do  or  to  think  about  Alcibiades.  In  the  Frogs,  pro- 
duced at  the  Lenaea  405,  Aristophanes  represents  Dionysus, 
still  wavering  as  to  whether  he  will  bring  back  Euripides  from 
the  dead,  as  he  first  meant,  or  Aeschylus,  and  finally  asking 
both  as  to  the  best  policy  for  Athens.* 

DioNYsos.  I'll  take  whichever  seems  the  best  adviser. 
Advise  me  first  of  Alcibiades, 
Whose  birth  gives  travail  still  to  mother  Athens. 

Pluto.  What  is  her  disposition  towards  him  ? 

DioNYSos.  WeU, 

"  She  loves  and  hates  and  longs  still  to  possess." 
I  want  the  views  of  both  upon  that  question  ! 

^  Thuc.  viii.  86,  4,  5  (Jowett's  translation),  reading  Trparos,  as 
Hude  also  does,  against  Mr.  Stuart  Jones'  irparov  in  the  Oxford  text. 
Trparov  hardly  seems  like  a  judgment  of  Thucydides  at  all — ^too  epi- 
grammatic and,  besides,  doubtful. 

2  Thuc.  vi.  15,4,  surely  referring  to  this  stage  of  afifairs. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  5,  10-17. 

*  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  1420-1434,  Professor  Murray's  translation, 
with  the  last  line  from  Mr.  B.  B.  Rogers. 


120  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Euripides.  Out  on  the  burgher,  who  to  serve  the  state 
Is  slow,  but  swift  to  do  her  deadly  hate, 
With  much  wit  for  himself,  and  none  for  her. 

DiONYSOS.  Good,  by  Poseidon,  that  ! — And  what  say  you  ? 

Aeschylus.  No  lion's  whelp  within  thy  precincts  raise  ; 
But,  if  it  be  there,  bend  thee  to  its  ways  ! 

DiONYSOS.  By  Zeus  the  Saviour,  still  I  can't  decide. 
One  is  so  clever  and  so  clear  the  other  ! 

So  the  city  is  left  in  travail.  He  had  done  Athens  deadly 
harm  when  in  exile  in  Sparta  ;  and  yet,  lion's  whelp  as  he  was, 

who   else   could   save   Athens  ?     Yes,   but So   there   it 

hung. 

One  more  service  he  did  Athens,  but  in  vain.  He  warned 
the  generals  before  Aegospotami  of  their  danger,  and  was 
snubbed  for  his  pains.  Then  came  the  downfall  of  the  Thirty. 
Alcibiades  no  longer  felt  secure  even  in  Rodosto,  and  resolved, 
like  a  second  Themistocles,  to  go  to  the  gates  of  the  Great 
King.  But  if  Dionysos  and  Demos  could  not  make  up  their 
minds  about  him,  Critias  did  ;  and  he  told  Lysander  Athens 
would  never  settle  down  under  an  oligarchy  while  Alcibiades 
lived.  So  one  night  in  a  Phrygian  village  the  house  was 
fired  over  his  head.  Alert  to  the  last,  he  saw  what  it  meant, 
flung  his  goods  to  the  flames,  and  sallied  out,  sword  in  hand, 
to  die  fighting,  but  the  barbarians  preferred  to  shoot  him  down 
from  a  safe  distance.  The  dead  body,  Timandra,  the  hetaira 
who  was  travelling  with  him,  buried  with  all  the  honour  she 
could  give  it — a  last  witness  to  his  charm.^ 

Even  so  the  man's  story  was  not  finished.  The  debate 
still  went  on — a  sort  of  King  Charles  the  First's  head  question — 
and  he  pervades  the  literature.  Lysias  reviles  him  ;  ^  Xeno- 
phon  defends  Socrates  against  the  charge  of  being  too  intimate 
with  him  ;  ^  Plato  draws  him  again  and  again  in  the  Socratic 
circle,  and  perhaps  sketches  the  "  Democratic  man  "  from  him  * 
— a  child  of  impulse,  every  pleasure  a  free  and  equal  citizen 
in  a  many-sided  character,  beautiful,  various,  unsteady,  a 
whole  "  bazar  "  of  notions  and  fancies  and  ideas,  to  one  thing 
constant  never  ;  and  Aristotle,  as  we  have  seen,  says  history 

1  Plut.  Alcih.  37-39.  ^  Lysias,  xiv. 

3  Xen.  Mem.  i.  2,  12-18,  24-39. 

*  So  Steinhart  cited  by  Adam,  ap.  Rep.  viii.  561c.  On  the  demo- 
cratic man,  see  further,  Chapter  IX.  p.  298. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  121 

deals  with  particulars — such  as  "  what  Alcibiades  did  or  had 
done  to  him."  ^  jj 

So  far  we  have  been  dealing  with  pohcies  and  politicians 
— always  fascinating  themes  ;  but  in  ancient  history  as  in 
modern  history  there  is  always  the  same  danger  of  forgetting 
how  small  a  part  of  life  is  really  covered  by  politics.  History 
may  be  written  too  much  from  the  Pnyx  as  from  St.  Stephen's, 
from  inscriptions  as  from  documents.  We  have  to  remember 
that  throughout  this  long  period,  the  twenty-seven  years  of 
the  Peloponnesian  War,  life  went  on  in  Athens  as  far  as  it  could 
on  its  usual  Unes — birth,  marriage,  and  death,  the  ritual  of 
temple  and  festival,  and  the  Black  Sea  trade  never  stopped. 
"  Of  all  men,"  said  Demosthenes,  "  we  use  the  most  imported 
wheat,"  2  and  it  came  from  the  Black  Sea.  The  price  of  fish 
rose  and  fell — a  too  frequent  subject  amon§  the  fragments  of 
the  Comic  poets  ;  Boeotian  poultry  and  eels  from  Copais  were 
scarce  and  dear,  and  wonderfully  welcome  when  they  did 
come.3  Strangers  came  and  went  —  merchants,  travellers, 
sophists,  envoys,  from  anywhere  and  everywhere — islanders 
to  have  their  law-suits  decided  and  to  pay  their  tribute, 
Sicilians  to  teach  the  Athenians  how  to  speak  and  write  Greek, 
astronomers  like  Meton,  Persian  envoys,  real  ones  *  and,  if 
we  dare  believe  Aristophanes,  sham  ones  too,  and,  what  is 
more,  Persian  refugees.  ^  The  Great  King,  if  Aristophanes 
is  right,  took  a  close  interest  in  Athens,  for  he  wished  to  know 
two  things  :  which  of  the  belligerents  was  more  powerful  on 
the  sea, 

And   next,    which    the    wonderful    Poet    has    got,    as    its   stern   and 

unsparing  adviser  ; 
For  those  who  are  lashed  by  his  satire,  he  said,  must  surely  be  better 

and  wiser.  ^ 

War-time  brought  with  it  of  course  special  interests  and 
excitements.  The  makers  of  weapons  and  armour  are  con- 
spicuous in  Aristophanes'  play,  The  Peace,  as  opponents  of 

^  Aristotle,  Poetics,  g,  3,  p.  145 1&. 

2  Dem.  de  Cor.  87.  Cf.  Lept.  32,  where  he  says  400,000  bushels 
a  year  from  King  Leucon's  country. 

^  Aristophanes,  Ach.  885  ;   Peace,  1003  ;    Lysistrata,  35. 

*  Thuc.  iv.  50.  6  Herodotus,  iii.  80,  Zopyros. 

•  Aristophanes,  Ach.  648. 


122  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

reconciliation — their  occupation  would  be  gone.  It  must 
have  been  a  very  considerable  occupation  at  all  times  in  Athens, 
and  especially  during  the  war.  Old  Cephalos,  of  Plato's 
Republic,  who  was  glad  he  had  been  rich,  because  riches  save 
a  man  from  so  much  sin,^  had  a  shield-factory  (his  son  Lysias 
tells  us)  in  which  he  employed  one  hundred  and  twenty  slaves, ^ 
and  he  and  his  made  money, — "  We  served  in  every  form  of 
choregia,  and  many  a  war  tax  we  paid," — lived  orderly  lives, 
and  ransomed  many  Athenians  from  the  enemy.  The  number 
of  fleets  launched  and  of  ships  lost  implies  a  very  great  ship- 
building industry  in  the  Peiraieus,  and  a  correspondingly  large 
import  of  lumber  from  Macedonia,^  and  perhaps  elsewhere,* 

Of  the  sailing  of  a  fleet  we  have  two  descriptions  from  this 
period.  Thucydides  tells  us,  in  memorable  chapters,^  how 
the  great  expedition  set  sail  for  Sicily.  "  Early  in  the  morning 
of  the  day  appointed,  the  Athenians  and  such  of  their  allies  as 
had  already  joined  them  went  down  to  the  Peiraieus  and 
began  to  man  the  ships.  The  entire  population  of  Athens 
accompanied  them,  citizens  and  strangers  alike.  The  citizens 
came  to  take  farewell,  one  of  an  acquaintance,  another  of  a 
kinsman,  another  of  a  son  ;  the  crowd  as  they  passed  along 
were  full  of  hope  and  full  of  tears  ;  hope  of  conqiiering  Sicily, 
tears  because  they  doubted  whether  they  would  ever  see  their 
friends  again,  when  they  thought  of  the  long  voyage  on  which 
they  were  sending  them.  At  the  moment  of  parting,  the 
danger  was  nearer ;  and  terrors  which  had  never  occurred  to 
them  when  they  were  voting  the  expedition  now  entered  into 
their  souls.  Nevertheless  their  spirits  revived  at  the  sight  of 
the  armament  in  all  its  strength  and  of  the  abundant  provision 
which  they  had  made.  The  strangers  and  the  rest  of  the 
multitude  came  out  of  curiosity,  desiring  to  witness  an  enter- 
prise of  which  the  greatness  exceeded  belief."  The  trierarchs, 
he  goes  on  to  say,  had  rivalled  one  another  in  the  pains  they 
had  taken  to  make  their  ships  beautiful  and  effective.  "  Men 
were  quite  amazed  at  the  boldness  of  the  scheme  and  the 
magnificence  of  the  spectacle."    "  When  the  ships  were  manned 

1  Plato,  Rep.  i.  328Dff.  -  Lysias,  c.  Eratosih.,  17-19. 

3  Thuc.  iv.  108. 

*  Perhaps  Mount  Ida ;  cf.  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  1,25. 

6  Thuc.  vi.  cc,  30-32  (Jowett). 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  123 

and  everything  required  for  the  voyage  had  been  placed  on 
board,  silence  was  proclaimed  by  the  sound  of  a  trumpet,  and 
all  with  one  voice  before  setting  sail  offered  up  the  customary 
prayers  ;  these  were  recited,  not  in  each  ship,  but  by  a  single 
herald,  the  whole  fleet  accompanying  him.  On  every  deck 
officers  and  men,  mingling  wine  in  bowls,  made  libations  from 
vessels  of  gold  and  silver.  The  multitude  of  citizens  and  other 
well-wishers  who  were  looking  on  from  the  land  joined  in  the 
prayer.  The  crews  raised  the  Paean,  and  when  the  libations 
were  completed,  put  to  seo .  After  sailing  out  for  some  distance 
in  single  file,  the  ships  raced  with  one  another  as  far  as  Aegina." 
That  is  a  worthy  description  of  a  great  moment  in  a  nation's 
history,  and  it  brings  to  us  that  suggestion  of  Tragedy  which 
lies  so  near  when  we  read  Thucydides.  But  many  fleets  sailed 
sooner  or  later,  some  to  come  back  eminently  victorious  ;  and 
the  conditions  of  the  dockyard  and  the  Peiraieus  generally  are 
given  from  another  point  of  view  by  Aristophanes,  and  his 
picture  deserves  study  no  less  : 

Ye  would  have  launched  three  hundred  ships  of  war, 

And  all  the  City  had  at  once  been  full 

Of  shouting  troops,  of  fuss  with  trierarchs. 

Of  paying  wages,  gilding  Pallases, 

Of  rations  measured,  roaring  colonnades. 

Of  wineskins,  oarloops,  bargaining  for  casks. 

Of  nets  of  onions,  olives,  garlic-heads, 

Of  chaplets,  pilchards,  flute-girls,  and  black  eyes. 

And  all  the  Arsenal  had  rung  with  noise 

Of  oar-spars  planed,  pegs  hammered,  oarloops  fitted, 

Of  boatswains'  calls,  and  flutes,  and  trills,  and  whistles.^ 

Now  and  again  we  come  on  a  personal  note  in  our  records, 
which  gives  us  a  closer  look  at  what  happened  at  these  times. 
In  a  speech  made  by  Lysias  for  some  one  whose  name  is  lost, 
the  speaker  emphasizes  what  a  fine  piece  of  work  he  made  of 
his  ship  when  he  was  trierarch  in  408  (or  407)  at  the  time  of 
Alcibiades'  sailing.  "  I  will  offer  you  a  convincing  proof  of 
this.  For,  in  the  first  place,  I  would  have  given  a  great  deal 
not  to  have  him  sailing  with  me,  for  he  was  no  friend  of  mine, 
nor  a  kinsman,  nor  of  my  tribe  ;  but  Alcibiades  chose  to  sail 
on  my  ship.  And  yet  I  think  you  know  that,  as  general  and 
able  to  do  what  he  pleased,  he  would  not  have  embarked  on 
^  Aristophanes,  Ach.  544-554  (B.  B.  Rogers). 


124  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

any  ship  but  the  best  sailer,  when  he  was  going  to  risk  his  own 
life."  1 

The  ships  of  Athens  from  time  to  time  raided  the  Pelo- 
ponnese,  as  Thucydides  mentions, ^  but  there  is  no  record  of 
what  impression  the  damage  done  made  on  the  Peloponnesians. 
It  must  have  been  severe,  and  terrible  too  in  its  suddenness, 
but  they  "  lacked  a  sacred  bard."  It  is  Aristophanes  alone 
who  gives  them  such  sympathy  as  they  get.^  The  islanders 
bribed  the  chief  men  of  Sparta,  who 

Greedily  embraced  the  war. 
But  from  this  their  own  advantage  ruin  to  their  farmers  came ; 
For  from  hence  the  eager  galleys  sailing  forth  with  vengeful  aim, 
Swallowed  up  the  figs  of  people  who  were  not,  perchance,  to  blame. 

No  doubt  the  sailors  and  soldiers  made  something  of  the 
booty  ;  but  it  is  not  likely  that  this  availed  much  to  console 
the  Attic  farmer,  lamenting  "  the  dusky  iigtree  I  had  loved 
and  nurtured  so,"  now  felled  by  Peloponnesian  invaders. 

One  feature  of  an  expedition  sailing  and  war  undertaken 
was  the  oracle-teller  with  his  book,^  the  seer  {fidvrts;),  and  the 
whole  tribe  of  prophets.  They  were  liable  to  error,  as  we  find 
from  Thucydides,  and  as  the  Athenians  found,  when  the 
S57racusan  expedition  failed,  and  they  vented  some  of  their 
anger  on  the  'oracle-tellers. ^  They  were  very  busy  "  chanting 
oracles  "  when  the  war  began  ;  *  and  when  the  invasion 
of  Attica  took  place  and  all  the  Athenians  stood  about 
in  groups  in  the  streets,  disputing  whether  to  go  out  and  fight 
or  to  forbear,  the  soothsayer  was  there  with  "  oracles  of  the 
most  different  kinds."  '  When  the  plague  came,  it  established 
the  reading  \otyLto9  as  against  A-a/ao?  in  a  weU-known  oracle.^ 
Nicias  kept  the  breed  in  house  and  camp,  though  the  prophet 
who  gave  the  last  fatal  word  for  a  delay  of  a  lunar  month,  we 
learn,  was  not  his  familiar  friend  Stilbides,  who  really  "  took 
away  much  of  his  superstition,"  but  another.^  Finally,  in  one 
play  of  Aristophanes'  and  another  the  oracle- teller  comes  in, 
an  absurd  figure,  reciting  silly  and  awful  oracles  in  hexameter 

^  Lysias,  xxi.  6.  ^  Thuc.  ii.  25,  56  ;  iii.  7,  16  ;   iv.  54. 

^  Aristophanes,  Peace,  624. 

*  Aristophanes,  Birds,  960  if.,  with  Xa/3e  to  fii^Xiov  as  a  refrain. 

*  Thuc.  viii.  i.       *  Thuc.  ii.  8.        '  Thuc.  ii.  21.        *  Thuc.  ii.  54. 

*  Plut.  Nicias,  23,  5  ;   Stilbides  had  died. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  125 

verse,  and  getting  little  out  of  it  but  ridicule.  Yes,  the  trade 
was  full  of  impostors  ;  but  who  could  tell  but  that  at  last  he 
might  find  a  prophet  who  really  knew  ?  ^  That  hope  seems  a 
permanent  weakness  of  mankind. 

Quite  apart  from  individuals,  the  state  also  as  a  whole  was 
guided  from  time  to  time  by  oracles.  In  the  winter  of  426, 
Thucydides  says,  the  Athenians  "  by  command  of  an  oracle 
purified  the  island  of  Delos."  ^  Pisistratus,  a  hundred  or  more 
years  before,  had  "  purified  "  it  so  far  as  it  lay  within  sight 
of  the  temple.  Now  the  Athenians  removed  from  the  graves 
all  the  dead  they  could  find — Thucydides  may  have  been  there, 
or  he  may  owe  his  information  to  another,  but  he  tells  us  that 
the  arms  found  with  the  dead,  and  the  mode  in  which  they  were 
buried,  made  it  clear  that  more  than  half  of  them  were  Carians.^ 
That,  however,  was  archaeology,  and  a  private  interest  of  the 
historian's ;  it  was  piety  that  moved  Athens  to  action.  To  keep 
the  island  pure  for  the  future,  it  was  ordained  "that  none 
should  die  or  give  birth  to  a  child  there,  but  that  the  inhabitants 
when  they  were  near  the  time  of  either  should  be  carried  across 
to  Rheneia,"  *  an  island  close  by.  After  the  purification  the 
Athenians  celebrated  the  Delian  games,  which  were  held  every 
four  years  ;  and  Thucydides  again  turns  to  archaeology  and 
quotes  the  Homeric  hymn  to  Apollo  to  prove  the  ancient  Ionian 
festival  there,  and  the  musical  contests,  in  which  Homer  had 
taken  part,  as  the  poet  says  himself — 

The  blind  old  man  from  Chios'  rocky  isle. 

All  that  had  been  left  of  the  festival  had  been  the  choruses, 
sent  with  sacrifices  by  the  Athenians  and  the  islanders ;  but 
now  the  games  were  restored  in  full,  and  horse-races  added. 

Plutarch  tells  us  that  Nicias  took  special  pains  about  these 
religious  observances  at  Delos.  When  the  ships  with  the 
choruses  arrived,  the  people  used  to  crowd  down  to  the  wharves 

1  See  the  account  of  Hippias,  Chapter  I.  p.  34. 

^  Thuc.  hi.  104,  on  Delos.  See  J.  Irving  Manatt,  Aegaean  Days, 
p.  196  ff.,  on  Delos  and  EJieneia,  and  the  spacious  and  secure  harbour 
between  them  ;  and  H.  F.  Tozer,  Islands  of  the  Aegaean,  ch.  i. 

3  Thuc.  i.  8. 

*  A  modern  Japanese  parallel  may  be  interesting.  "  Until  recently 
births  and  deaths  were  prohibited  on  the  sacred  island  of  Itsukushima 
in  the  Inland  Sea  "  (W.  G.  Aston,  Shinto,  p.  251). 


126  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  call  on  them  to  sing  ;  and  they  would  come  ashore,  robing 
and  crowning  themselves,  and  singing,  in  no  order  at  all. 
Nicias,  however,  landed  his  chorus  and  offerings  and  everything 
on  Rheneia,  and  brought  a  bridge  ready-made,  gilded  and 
painted  and  hung  with  curtains  ;  and  then  at  dawn  he  marched 
his  procession  over  the  bridge  in  order,  singing  as  they  stepped. 
He  set  up  a  bronze  palm-tree  in  the  god's  honour,  and  bought 
a  farm  for  10,000  drachmas,  whose  revenues  were  to  yield 
an  annual  banquet  for  the  Delians,  at  which  they  were  to  pray 
to  the  gods  for  "  many  blessings  for  Nicias."  ^  Even  so  the 
Athenians  were  not  quite  satisfied,  and  in  422  they  cleared  the 
Delians  out  altogether,  and  Pharnaces,  the  satrap  of  Daskyleion, 
gave  them  a  refuge  at  Adramyttium.^  A  Delian  inscription  of 
about  403  is  taken  to  be  a  decree  of  the  Spartans  reinstating 
the  Delians  in  possession  of  their  own  temple  and  temple 
treasure,^  just  as  the  Melians  and  Aeginetans,  as  many  as  could 
be  found,  were  given  back  their  own  lands.*  x\fterwards  it  is 
clear  that  Athens  recovered  and  kept  Delos — perhaps  by 
377  B.C.5 

Delos  was  not  the  only  centre  of  religion  and  festival. 
Alcibiades,  as  we  have  seen  him  boast,  took  care  that  Athens 
should  be  heard  of  at  Olympia  in  416.  In  420  Lichas,  a  Spartan 
honourably  known  in  the  history  of  the  period,^  had  won  the 
chariot  race  with  a  chariot  entered  in  the  name  of  the  Boeotian 
state,  and  when  he  had  crowned  his  victorious  driver,  he  had 
been  struck  by  the  officers,  to  the  consternation  of  everybody.' 
But  in  416  the  glory  all  redounded  to  Athens.  What  is  more 
curious,  Euripides  wrote  a  triumphal  ode  for  the  event,  which 
Plutarch  quotes  to  show  (against  Thucydides)  that  the  third 
chariot  of  Alcibiades  came  in  third  in  the  race  and  not  fourth.^ 
There  is  something  to  be  said  for  Plutarch's  canon  that  small 
things  are  often  more  illuminative  than  great. ^ 

Beside  the  old  ancestral  gods  of  Delos  and  Olympia,  new 
gods  altogether  begin  in  this  period   to  be  conspicuous  in 

^  Plut.  Nicias,  3,  4-6. 

'^  Thuc.  V.  I.  For  Pharnaces  and  his  Greek  interests,  see  Chapter 
VII.  p.  210. 

8  Hicks  and  Hill,  No.  83.  «  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  9. 

^  Hicks  and  Hill,  No.  104.  «  See  Chapter  VI.  p.  169. 

'  Thuc.  V.  50.  8  Plut.  Alcib.  11. 

»  Plut.  Alexander,  i. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  127 

Athens.  All  sorts  of  strangers  were  settling  there  and  bringing 
their  cults  with  them — some  coming  as  slaves,  some  as  traders. 
For  instance,  in  411,  in  the  Lysistrata  Aristophanes  makes 
the  Proboulos  refer  to  a  strange  occurrence  of  five  years  before, 
which  posterity  remembered^ — 

Has  then  the  women's  wantonness  blazed  out, 
Their  constant  timbrels  and  Sabazioses, 
And  that  Adonis-dirge  upon  the  roof, 
Which  once  I  heard  in  full  Assembly-time, 
'Twas  when  Demostratus   (beshrew  him)  moved 
To  sail  to  Sicily  ;    and  from  the  roof 
A  woman,  dancing,  shrieked  Woe,  woe,  Adonis  ! 
And  he  proposed  to  enrol  Zacynthian  hoplites  ; 
And  she  upon  the  roof,  the  maudlin  woman. 
Cried  Wail,  Adonis  !    yet  he  forced  it  through. 

Sabazios  was  a  Phrygian  god,^  and  Adonis  came  from  Syria, 
probably  with  Cyprus  as  a  half-way  house. ^  Asclepios  also 
was  moved  from  Epidauros  to  Athens,  though  without  losing 
his  ancient  abode,  and  inscriptions  testify  to  clubs  organized  in 
his  honour,  and  their  members,  orgeones. 

But  while  these  universal  gods  with  orgiastic  rites  begin  to 
appear  beside  the  local  cults,  which  they  were  to  overshadow 
and  to  obscure,  far  more  characteristic  of  Athens  are  still 
those  festivals  of  Dionysus,  with  which  were  associated  the 
plays.  Tragedies  and  Comedies,  which  men  will  never  cease  to 
read.  Sabazios  is  long  gone  and  Adonis  with  him,  but  Oedipus 
at  Colonos  and  The  Birds  still  live.  I  do  not  wish  here  to  speak 
of  them  as  literature,  but  rather  to  remark  the  circumstances 
of  their  production.  Athens  was  at  war — had  been  at  war  for 
years,  and  had  suffered  terribly  in  loss  of  life  and  wealth  and 
spirit.  Sophocles  was  an  old  man.  When  he  was  between 
fifty  and  sixty,  Athens  had  made  him  a  General,  and  he  had 
commanded  with  Pericles  at  the  siege  of  Samos,  as  we  have  seen. 
Nearly  thirty  years  later  in  413,  some  hold  that  Athens  turned 

^  Plut.  Nicias,  12,  13  ;  and  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  389. 

2  Cf .  Aristophanes,  Birds  (year  415),  Sy^,  Sabazios  and  the  Great 
Mother. 

3  Aristophanes,  Peace,  420.  See  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  pp.  4,  5, 
on  the  incoming  of  foreign  cults  ;  and  W.  S.  Ferguson,  Hellenistic 
Athens,  217. 


128  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

to  him  again  for  political  service  and  made  him  a  Proboulos,  in 
that  endeavour  for  "  sense,  economy,  and  good  order"  which 
ended  in  the  affair  of  the  Four  Hundred — "  wickedness  "  ;  the 
poet  admitted  that,  "but  there  was  nothing  better  to  do.''^ 
Perhaps  even  then  he  was  working  at  his  Oedipus — an  extra- 
ordinary poem  for  so  old  a  man,  one  would  say,  if  Euripides 
had  not  almost  at  the  same  time  produced  his  Bacchae. 

That  is  the  amazing  thing — "  I  will  not  cease  to  wed  Grace 
and  the  Muse — ^happiest  of  unions.  Be  it  not  mine  to  live 
without  the  Muse,  but  ever  be  garlands  mine.  Old  indeed 
is  the  singer,  but  yet  of  Memory  he  sings  "  : 

ert  TOi  yepatv  aoiBos 
KeXaSet  Mvafioavvav.^ 

And  that  is  true  of  them  both,  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
— true  up  to  the  very  end,  and  this  in  a  community  dragging 
desperately  on  with  its  death  struggle.  Athens  has  leisure  of 
mind  for  masterpieces  of  art,  and  what  is  more — though  it  is 
difficult  to  put  it  into  words  and  avoid  the  appearance  of 
nonsense — Athens  has  still  the  corporate  vitality  that  makes 
such  masterpieces  possible.  She  produced,  it  is  true,  no  new 
Tragic  poets  of  much  account ;  yet  the  old  ones  and  she  had  still 
in  common  the  energy  of  mind  and  abundance  of  life  on  which 
a  national  poetry  depends.  When  the  two  old  men  died  and 
Agathon  went  away  to  Macedon,  the  change  was  felt.  There 
were  "  thousands  and  thousands  of  youngsters  making 
tragedies," — whole  "Museums  of  swallows," — ^but  none  with 
vitality  for  more  than  one  play  at  best.^  Dionysos  had  to 
descend  into  Hell  again,  this  time  not  for  Semele,  but  for 
Euripides  ;  and  he  does  it  in  the  Frogs. '^ 

Once  again  the  Frogs  is  another  astounding  illustration 

1  Aristotle,  Rhetoric,  iii.  i8,  6,  p.  1419a.  Sir  Richard  Jebb  in  a 
note  to  his  translation  says  it  was  another  Sophocles.  It  may  have 
been,  of  course — we  know  of  another  in  Thucydides  sent  to  Sicily 
(iii.  115)  and  exiled  (iv.  65) — but  I  am  not  sure.  For  the  Probouloi, 
see  Chapter  VI.  p.  186. 

^  Eur.  Hercules  Furens  (rather  after  424  B.C.),  673.  Memory  is  not 
quite  our  plain  English  faculty,  but  the  Memory  of  the  Greek  myth, 
who  was  Mother  to  all  the  Muses.  Cf.  Aesch.  Prom.  V.  461,  and  Plato, 
Theaetetus,  191  d. 

*  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  89  ff.  *  More  upon  this  in  Chapter  V. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  129 

of  Athenian  life  and  character.  It  was  produced  at  the 
Lenaea  of  405,  between  the  last  two  great  battles — Arginusae, 
with  its  horrible  sequel  of  the  trial  of  the  generals,  and 
Aegospotami — produced  for  a  public  festival,  and  its  theme  is 
literary  criticism,  the  comparative  merits  of  two  great  Tragic 
poets.  There  never  was  such  a  people  ;  they  gave  Aristo- 
phanes the  prize — once  more  one  remarks  with  wonder  the 
amazing  leisure  of  mind  and  resilience  of  character  of  this 
strange  race. 

Aristophanes  is  in  many  things  a  tjrpical  Athenian — or  at 
least  so  it  must  seem  to  modems  who  read  ordinary  Athenian 
life  in  his  plays  and  know  that  Athens  valued  him  above  all 
her  comic  poets,  not  merely  as  she  came  to  value  Euripides, 
for  she  crowned  and  crowned  him  again  while  he  lived.  From 
what  we  can  make  out  from  the  fragments  of  other  poets,  the 
lines  for  Comedy  were  laid  down  by  tradition,  and  food  and 
drink  and  the  phallos  were  inherent  in  the  scheme  ;  and,  just 
as  the  chorus  was  an  essential  part  both  of  Tragedy  and 
Comedy,  they  could  not  be  left  out.  But  there  is  little  in- 
dication that  Aristophanes  wanted  to  leave  them  out,  so 
riotously  and  triumphantly  do  his  wit  and  his  humour  play 
about  them.  He  stood  with  his  people  here.  If  it  is  urged 
that  his  plots  are  generally  slight,  and  that  the  structure  of 
his  plays  is  generally  the  same,  with  the  same  type  of  opening 
scene  and  the  same  dependence  toward  the  end  on  mere  episode, 
some  part  of  this  may  be  due  to  tradition.^  At  the  same  time, 
if  genius  be  an  infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains,  genius  is 
very  apt  to  shirk  unnecessary  pains  ;  and  if,  like  Shakespeare, 
it  can  borrow  a  plot,  or,  like  Aristophanes,  do  without  one,  it 
will.  A  stranger  feature  in  the  Aristophanic  play  is  the  general 
absence  of  characters.  Dikaiopolis,  most  of  us  would  feel, 
could  change  places  with  Trygaios,  or  any  other  virtuous 
patriot  of  ordinary  appetites  ;  either  of  them  owes  all  he  has 
to  the  poet — of  wit  and  invention  and  love  of  ease — and  is 
little  more  than  a  mask.  The  Cleon,  the  Euripides,  the 
Socrates,  and  the  Lamachus  of  the  plays  are  frankly  caricatures, 
hardly  intended  to  be  characters  at  all.  Of  psychology  there 
is  a  minimum — no  Aguecheek,  no  Shylock  ;    villains,  knaves, 

^  Of  this  we  might  be  more  sure  if  we  had  the  comedies  of  other 
poets  of  his  day  intact. 
9 


130  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

fools,  absurdities,  plenty  of  them,  and  all  highly  coloured 
and  superbly  funny.  The  women  of  the  plays  are  few,  and 
slighter  than  the  men,  and  where  they  are  not  absurd,  the 
interest  is  simply  phallic  ;  even  in  a  serious  play  like  the 
Lysistmta  the  heroine  makes  no  disguises  about  her  strongest 
suit — ^her  only  one,  it  might  be  said.  As  a  politician,  Aristo- 
phanes is  outrageously — gloriously — partisan  ;  and  if  anything 
is  wanted  to  complete  the  comedy  of  his  politics,  it  is  supplied  by 
historians,  ancient  and  modern,  who  have  taken  them  seriously. 
One  could  imagine  his  enjoyment  at  such  a  discovery,  if 
certain  historians  have  had  any  circulation  in  the  Elysian  fields. 
There  is  no  writer  of  the  period  who  so  successfully  takes 
us  into  family  life  of  a  kind  ^ — cookery,  tastes  in  dishes,  the 
handiness  of  wife  and  daughter  and  Thracian  slave-girl, 
domestic  implements  and  incidents.^  Above  all,  nowhere  else 
do  we  touch  the  country  life  of  Attica  at  all  so  nearly — outdoor 
and  indoor ;  take,  for  instance,  the  famous  picture  of  the 
wet  day  and  its  relaxations  in  the  Peace?  But  the  pleasure 
of  man  and  woman  with  nature  as  a  background  is  a  familiar 
theme  in  antiquity  ;  it  is  not  so  often  that  a  poet  has  much 
attention  for  nature,  when  man  and  woman  are  away.  Euri- 
pides had  it,  and  so  had  Aristophanes,  as  the  bird-lyrics  show  : 

Come  hither  any  bird  with  plumage  hke  my  own  ; 
Come  hither  ye  that  batten  on  the  acres  newly  sown, 

On  the  acres  by  the  farmer  neatly  sown  ; 
And  the  myriad  tribes  that  feed  on  the  barley  and  the  seed, 
The  tribes  that  lightly  fly,  giving  out  a  gentle  cry  ; 
And  ye  who  round  the  clod,  in  the  furrow-riven' sod. 
With  voices  sweet  and  low,  twitter  flitter  to  and  fro. 

Singing  tio.  Ho,  Ho,  tiotinx  ; 
And  ye  who  in  the  gardens  a  pleasant  harvest  glean. 
Lurking  in  the  branches  of  the  ivy  ever  green  ; 
And  ye  who  top  the  mountains  with  gay  and  airy  flight ; 
And  ye  who  in  the  olive  and  the  arbutus  delight ; 
Come  hither  one  and  all,  come  flpng  to  our  call, 

Trioto,  trioto,  totobrinx.* 

1  Another  kind  we  shall  see  in  Chapter  XI. 

*  Aristophanes,  Ach.  241-278. 

®  Aristophanes,  Peace,  1127-1171.  Cf.  on  this  scene  Countess 
Martinengo  Cesaresco,  Outdoor  Life  in  Greek  and  Roman  Poets  (a  charm- 
ing book),  ch.  ii.  ;  and  Livingstone,  Greek  Genius,  p.  129. 

*  Aristophanes,  Birds,  229  (B.  B.  Rogers). 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  131 

It  is  not  every  farmer  even  to-day  who  is  friendly  to  the 
birds.  Perhaps  it  was  this  flippancy  about  the  loss  of  good 
grain  that  induced  the  audience  to  give  the  play  only  the 
second  prize.  I  think  it  is  only  in  Virgil  in  antiquity  that 
we  find  such  whole-hearted  sympathy  with  birds  and  mice 
and  other  depredators  who  prey  on  the  farmer — and  both  the 
poets  loved  the  farmer  too. 

"He  of  old,"  writes  Marcus  Aurelius,  "  says,  '  Dear  City 
of  Cecrops !  '  and  thou,  wilt  not  thou  say,  '  O  dear  City  of 
Zeus  '  ?  "  1  It  is  Aristophanes  he  is  quoting,  and  one  of  his 
earliest  plays,  though  where  Marcus  read  the  Babylonians  it  is 
hard  to  guess,  or  why  the  phrase  stayed  in  his  mind.  "  Dear 
City  of  Cecrops"  represents  the  poet's  attitude.  He  made 
fun  of  his  fellow-countrymen — they  expected  it  and  wanted  it, 
and  he  did  it.  He  abused  their  leaders — and  it  looks  as  if 
they  rather  enjoyed  it  ^ — a  trait  of  Athenian  character  worth 
remembering,  for  it  was  not  shared  by  the  Spartans,  and  the 
time  came  when  Athens  felt  she  could  do  without  polities  in 
Comedy.^  Their  prevailing  politics  the  poet  never  liked — ■ 
war  and  empire  and  the  ill-usage  of  other  Greeks  were  repulsive 
to  him.  His  is  one  of  the  friendliest  voices  we  hear  in  Athens 
for  the  allies  and  all  the  Hellenes. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  one  of  Aristophanes'  deepest 
antipathies  gives  us  a  clue  to  the  real  culture  of  his  audience. 
How  was  it  that  he  was  able  to  quote  so  much  of  Euripides — 
to  parody  word  and  scene  from  him — and  not  miss  fire  ? 
Take  it  in  conjunction  with  Plutarch's  story  of  the  Athenian 
prisoners  in  Sicily  singing  Euripides'  lyrics,*  and  a  good  deal  is 
achieved  to  vindicate  against  some  modern  critics  the  general 
high  culture  of  the  Athenian  people. 

But,  for  all  the  amenities  of  life,  the  long  war  told  on  the 
national  temper.  The  losses  of  life  by  war  and  plague,  and 
by  the  Sicilian  expedition,  were  enormous — "  of  many  who 
went  out,  few  came  home."  ^    "  What  have  you  women  to 

^  Marcus  Aurelius,  iv.  23. 

^Grote  (viii.  131)  suggests  the  democracy  was  strong  enough  to 
tolerate  unfriendly  tongues.  E.  Meyer,  iv.  §  560,  holds  that  the  people 
rather  liked  having  their  leaders  "  chaffed  " — even  despised  them. 

^  Cf.  speech  of  Critias,  ap.  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  34. 

*  Plut.  Nicias,  29,  2.     Cf.  Chapter  V,  p.  140. 

*  Thuc.  vii.,  last  chapter. 


132  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

do  with  war  ?  "  asks  the  Proboulos  of  Lysistrata,  and  she 
rejoins  : 

She.  Nothing  to  do  with  it  ?    wretch  that  you  are  ! 
We  are  the  people  who  feel  it  the  keenliest, 
Doubly  on  us  the  afQiction  is  cast ; 
Where  are  the  sons  that  we  sent  to  your  battle-fields  ? 

He.  Silence  !  a  truce  to  the  ills  that  are  past. 

What  consolation  Pericles'  speech  had  for  mothers  of  fallen 
sons  may  be  wondered. 

For  those  who  lived,  the  war  made  everything  more 
difficult.  The  country  people  crowded  into  the  city  and  lived 
where  they  could,  "  for  eight  years  together,  in  tubs  and 
turrets  and  crannies."  ^  The  Peloponnesian  invasions  steadily 
impoverished  them,  and  living  was  always  a  struggle  in  a 
Greek  city.  Pay  for  service  in  the  law  courts,  in  the  Ecclesia, 
on  the  ships,  was  necessary  for  poor  freemen  who  had  to 
compete  with  slave  labour  ;  and  the  numbers  of  slaves  in 
Athens  must  have  been  enormous — all  to  be  fed,  too.  Cephalos, 
as  we  saw,  had  one  hundred  and  twenty  at  the  end  of  the  war. 
If  the  pressure  of  slave  on  freeman  was  perhaps  lightened, 
when  the  Spartans  fortified  Deceleia  and  more  than  twenty 
thousand  slaves,  mostly  artisans,  ran  away,  others  suffered 
heavily  by  the  loss  of  this  living  property.  Cattle  and  sheep 
were  taken  by  the  enemy,  and  all  sorts  of  plunder.  One  very 
curious  and  interesting  fact  comes  from  the  Greek  history 
lately  found  at  Oxyrhynchus.^  "  The  Thebans  made  a  great 
stride  forward  to  all-round  prosperity  {evhai^ioviav  oXo/cXrjpov) 
immediately  the  war  began  ;  "  for  in  the  first  place  the  menace 
of  Athens  led  to  the  removal  of  population  from  many  small 
and  un walled  places  into  Thebes,  and  so  doubled  Thebes, 
which,  after  the  occupation  of  Deceleia,  "  did  much  better, 
for  they  bought  cheap  the  slaves  and  the  other  plunder  of 
the  war,  and  living  so  near  they  shifted  over  to  themselves 
all  the  movable  property  {KaTaa-Kevrjv)  of  Attica,  down  to 
the  timber  and  tiles  of  the  houses.  At  that  time  the  land 
of  the  Athenians  was  in  a  better  state  than  any  in  Greece, 
for  it  had  suffered  little  in  the  raids,  and  had  been  developed 
and  worked  by  the  Athenians  to  such  an  extent  that  ..." 
and  here  the  papyrus  fails  us. 
1  Aristophanes,  Knights  (year  424),  793.     ^  Hellenica  Oxyvhynchia,  12,  3 . 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  133 

Hitherto  the  corn  route  had  been  from  Byzantium,  along 
the  north  coast  of  the  Propontis,  out  of  the  Dardanelles, 
picking  up  the  islands  (always  essential  to  Athens)  Imbros, 
Lemnos,  and  Scyros,  to  Euboea,  then  across  the  island  and 
over  the  Euripos,  and  by  land  from  Oropus  through  Attica 
to  Athens.  That  way  was  now  blocked  by  the  Deceleian 
garrison,  and  the  ships  had  to  round  Sunium  with  constant 
risk  (after  the  destruction  of  the  Athenian  fleet)  from  privateers 
and  pirates.^  The  cost  of  everything  rose,  and  at  the  same 
time  coin  and  the  precious  metals  in  any  form  became  scarcer 
and  scarcer,  till  at  last  temple  treasures  and  votive  offerings 
had  to  be  minted,  and  so  Athens  had  her  first  gold  coinage, 
"  using  the  Victories  for  the  war."  ^  Taxation,  liturgies, 
trierarchies — there  was  no  end  to  it. 

With  the  enemy  so  near  there  was  garrison  duty  night 
and  day,  and  the  habit  of  carrying  v/eapons,  which  had  long 
been  dropped  in  Athens,^  began  again  perforce.*  Aristophanes 
makes  fun  of  it — or  at  least  Lysistrata  does  to  the  Proboulos  :  ^ 

Lysistrata.  Now  in  the  market  you  see  them  like  Corybants 
jangling  about  with  their  armour  of  mail. 
Fiercely  they  stalk  in  the  midst  of  the   crockery,  sternly  parade 
by  the  cabbage  and  kail. 
Proboulos.  Right,  for  a  soldier  should  always  be  soldierly  ! 
Lysistrata.  Troth,  'tis  a  mighty  ridiculous  jest. 
Watching  them  haggle  for  shrimps  in  the  market-place,   grimly 
accoutred  with  shield  and  with  crest. 
Stratyllis.  Lately  I  witnessed  a  captain  of  cavalry,  proudly 
the  whUe  on  his  charger  he  sat. 
Witnessed  him,  soldierly,  buying  an  omelet,  stowing  it  all  in  his 

cavalry  hat. 
Comes,  like  a  Tereus,  a  Thracian  irregular,  shaking  his  dart  and 

his  target  to  boot ; 
Off  runs  a  shop-girl,  appalled  at  the  sight  of  him,  down  he  sits, 
soldierly,  gobbles  her  fruit. 

The  contrast  with  the  usual  peaceful  unconcern  of  Athenian 
life  is  signal.^ 

War  is  "  a  violent  teacher,"  as  Thucydides  said,'  and  these 

^  Thuc.  vii.  27,  28.  2  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  720  ;    C.I. A.  i.  140. 

3  Thuc.  i.  6.  *  Thuc.  vii.  28. 

^  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  557-564  (B.  B.  Rogers). 

®  Cf.  Demosthenes,  Midias,  221. 

'  Thuc.  iii.  82,  2.     See  Chapter  III.  p.  71. 


134  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

were  some  of  its  lessons.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  Athenian 
temper  grew  sharper,  that  the  avroBa^  rpoirofs,  the  "  bite- 
at-sight  habit,"  ^  grew  more  and  more  nervous  and  irritable. 
There  was  no  mercy  for  generals  who  failed — Laches,  Paches, 
Eurymedon,  or  Thucydides.  Nicias  was  afraid  to  come  back 
beaten  from  Syracuse,  though  to  bring  away  what  he  could 
of  the  beaten  forces  and  fleet  was  the  only  patriotism.  The 
generals  after  Arginusae  are  an  even  more  outstanding 
illustration. 

One  bad  example  the  Peloponnesians  set,  which  caused 
great  irritation  and  was  copied.  Early  in  the  war  they  began 
capturing  trading  vessels,  6\Kdhe^,  and  kilhng  the  traders, 
whether  Athenians,  or  Athenian  allies,  or  neutrals. ^  The 
Samian  delegates  told  one  Spartan  admiral  "  he  had  an  ill 
manner  of  liberating  Hellas,  if  he  put  to  death  men  who  were 
not  his  enemies,  and  were  not  lifting  a  hand  against  him,  but 
were  allies  of  Athens  from  necessity."  ^  Then  came  reprisals 
in  kind.  The  Mitylene  massacre  was  indeed  countermanded, 
but  Melos  was  andrapodized,  the  adult  men  killed,  the 
women  and  children  sold  off  to  dealers  for  the  slave-markets 
and  TTopveia  of  the  Mediterranean.*  The  Aeginetans,  expelled 
from  their  island,  and  settling  in  the  Thyxeatis,  were  raided, 
and  the  captives  taken  to  Athens  and  killed  there  "  for  the 
hatred  they  had  always  had  to  them  from  of  old."  ^  Finally 
before  Aegospotami  it  was  resolved  to  cut  the  right  hand  off 
every  man  captured  on  a  Peloponnesian  trireme — he  should 
row  no  more.  6  To  his  credit  the  general,  Adeimantos,  spoke 
against  it.  Of  two  triremes,  a  Corinthian  and  an  Andrian, 
which  they  took,  they  drove  the  crews  over  a  precipice. 

Then  came  the  final  blow,  and  the  memory  with  it  of  the 
precedents  they  had  set.  Let  Xenophon,  who  grew  up  in  the 
Athens  of  the  war,  and  must  have  been  there,  tell  us  what 
he  saw. 

1  Aristophanes,  Peace,  607.  ^  xhuc.  ii.  67.  '  Thuc.  iii.  32. 

*  Thuc.  V.  116.  This  kiUing  and  enslaving  of  a  whole  city  is  discussed 
by  Plato  and  deprecated  in  the  case  of  Greek  against  Greek  ;  Greek 
against  barbarian  is  another  story — they  are  natural  enemies,  and  war 
between  them  is  not  a-Taa-is,  as  between  Greeks  who  are  by  nature 
friends.  Rep.  469B-470C.  To  understand  what  it  meant,  the  modern 
reader  had  better  look  up  the  treatment  of  Chios  by  the  Turks  in  1822. 

5  Thuc.  iv.  57,  4.  «  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  i,  31,  32. 


ATHENS  IN  THE  WAR-TIME  135 

"  It  was  night  when  the  Paralos  vessel  came,  and  the 
disaster  was  told  in  Athens ;  and  wailing  came  up  from 
Peiraieus  between  the  Long  Walls  to  the  city,  every  man 
telling  the  next.  So  that,  that  night,  no  man  slept,  wailing 
not  only  for  the  lost  but  still  more  for  themselves,  thinking 
they  must  themselves  suffer  what  they  had  done  to  the  Melians, 
who  were  colonists  of  the  Spartans,  when  they  took  them  by 
siege,  and  to  the  people  of  Histiaea,  of  Scione,  of  Torone,  of 
Aegina,  and  many  others  of  the  Greeks."  All  through  the 
siege  of  Athens,  as  Xenophon  shows  us,  this  thought  came 
back  again  and  again — that  Athens  must  suffer  what  she  had 
inflicted  on  the  little  cities.^ 

She  did  not  suffer  it ;  but  let  us  ask  ourselves  how  and 
why  it  is  that  we  forgive  her  all  the  wrong  she  made  others 
suffer,  and  do  not  forgive  those  who  even  thought  of  inflicting 
as  much  on  her  again. 

^  The  story  is  taken  up  in  Chapter  VI.  p.  189. 


CHAPTER   V 
EURIPIDES 

BIOGRAPHY  is  never  an  easy  task — least  of  all  when  its 
subject  is  a  poet.  With  care  we  may  track  him  down, 
till  we  can  account  for  almost  every  month  of  his 
life  —  with  date  and  place  exactly  given  —  and  then  when 
we  have  found  him  where  impressions  must  have  come 
most  vividly,  he  tells  us  that  all  the  time  he  was  thinking 
of  something  else — he  had 

A  strangeness  in  the  mind, 
A  feeling  that  I  was  not  for  that  hour 
Nor  for  that  place. 

And  we  discover  that  amid  what  would  most  have  impressed 
us,  he  was 

Voyaging  through  strange  seas  of  thought,  alone. 

But  when  our  subject  is  a  poet  of  the  ancient  world,  we  are  less 
likely  to  make  a  true  biography.  Yet  the  ancient  poet  lived  a 
life — lived  it  among  men  at  a  certain  time  and  in  a  certain  place ; 
and  whatever  strange  seas  of  thought  he  voyaged  through, 
sometimes  we  know  the  port  from  which  he  started  and  can 
guess  the  haven  which  he  tried  to  make,  and  sometimes,  if 
we  know  contemporary  history,  we  can  divine  how  it  was  that 
this  or  that  came  to  be  marked  so  emphatically  upon  his  chart. 
Euripides,  men  said,  was  born  on  the  very  day  of  the  battle 
of  Salamis,  and  on  the  island  of  Salamis — on  the  day  which 
marks  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  for  all  Greeks,  and  he  of  all 
men  most  definitely  belongs  to  the  new  age.  On  Salamis  he 
lived  as  a  man  for  a  good  deal  of  his  time,  we  are  told ;  and 
perhaps  he  grew  up  there.  What  is  that  makes  a  childhood  ? 
What  was  it  to  grow  up  on  a  little  estate  that  perhaps  lay  near 
the  scene  of  the  great  fight  ?  When  he  looked  back,  did  he 
remember  wrecks  of  Phoenician  galleys,  dropping  slowly  to 

pieces  upon   the  beach — strange   trophies,   cups  of  Eastern 

136 


EURIPIDES  137 

workmanship,  swords  and  armour  of  no  pattern  Greeks  ever 
saw  again,  kept  in  the  houses  of  the  Salaminians — each  with  its 
story  ?  1  Do  we  reaHze  how  often  memory  is  three  generations 
deep,  and  what  this  means  to  an  imaginative  child  ?  Was 
he  told  tales  of  the  great  war  ?  He  must  have  heard  them— 
of  Marathon  and  Hippias,  and  Pisistratus.  And  there  would 
be  slaves  in  the  houses  round  about — who  came  on  the  great 
Armada  from  the  utmost  ends  of  the  earth,  and  were  taken  by 
the  victorious  Greeks  and  sold  ;  and  the  boy  made  friends  with 
them,  men  and  women,  and  they  told  him  what  it  was  to  be 
sold  in  a  strange  land — hither  or  thither,  where  they  did 
not  know — Sparta,  Sicily,  Athens — the  gods  only  knew, 
and  perhaps  they  did  not  care. 

Who  am  I  that  I  sit 

Here  at  a  Greek  king's  door, 
Yea,  in  the  dust  of  it  ? 

A  slave  that  men  drive  before, 
A  woman  that  hath  no  home, 

Weeping  alone  for  her  dead  ; 

A  low  and  bruised  head. 
And  the  glory  struck  therefroni.^ 

Such  stories,  and  worse  ones,  told  in  a  foreigner's  halting 
Greek  ^  to  a  sensitive  child  formed  the  reverse  of  the  glorious 
tales  of  victory  he  learnt  from  parents  and  kinsmen,  from  the 
freemen  and  the  conquerors.     Grown  people  know  that 

things  like  this  must  be 
In  every  famous  victory, 

but  the  child  asks,  Why  ?  and  when  he  is  told  to  be  silent, 
he  asks  himself  the  question  ;  and  if  Nature  has  planned  a 
poet  in  him,  the  unanswered  question  may  never  cease  to  work. 
Such  things  must  have  lain  at  the  door  for  the  open  eyes  of  the 
Greek  child,  Euripides,  and  they  haunted  his  life. 

Then  came  boyhood  and  books,  and  the  choice  of  a  life. 
Legend  says  he  wished  to  be  a  painter — a  strange  choice. 

1  If  evidence  is  needed,  Pericles  speaks  (Thuc.  ii.  13,  4)  of  o-kCXo 
Mrjbina  Koi  e'i  rt  TOLovTorpoirov ;  and  the  inventories  of  the  treasures 
in  the  Parthenon  between  422  and  418  B.C.  (Hicks  and  HUl,  Greek 
Inscr.,  No.  66)  include  six  dKivuKai  irepixpva-oi,  Persian  swords.  Cf. 
Herodotus,  vii.  190;  viii.  8,  96;  ix.  80. 

*  Troades,  138  (Professor  Gilbert  Murray). 

'  Aristophanes  shows  us  how  foreign  slaves  stumbled  in  Greek. 


138  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

"  No  youth  of  parts,"  says  Plutarch,  "  because  he  saw  the 
Zeus  of  Olympia,  would  wish  therefore  to  be  a  Pheidias."  ^ 
Euripides  came  of  a  good  family — a-(f)6Bpa  evyevwv  —  and 
in  spite  of  his  lifelong  interest  in  the  arts,  he  never  became 
painter  or  sculptor.  He  never  took  to  public  life,  like 
Sophocles  ;  he  never  was  called  to  command  on  the  deck  of  a 
trireme  nor  to  draft  a  constitution  for  his  country ;  he  was 
not  wanted.  When  he  served  as  a  soldier,  for  he  probably  had 
to  serve  in  his  turn,  unless  luck  sent  him  to  Egypt  or  Cyprus, 
it  was  probably  against  Greeks  he  had  to  fight.  If  he  served  in 
Egypt  by  any  chance,  it  was  an  awful  lesson  he  learnt  of  the 
meaning  of  war.^  But  this  is  all  conjecture.  There  was  war 
enough  for  him  to  see,  and  prisoners  of  war  on  sale  in  the  slave- 
market,  where  he  could  see  what  has  always  been  seen  in  slave- 
markets.  He  seems  to  have  gone  back  to  private  life — to  his 
books.  Athenaeus  ^  names  him  among  some  half-dozen  men 
of  the  days  before  the  Pergamene  kings,  who  were  famous 
for  their  great  libraries,  and  two  of  these  were  tyrants  in 
their  time.  A  hundred  years  after  his  death  it  was 
said  that  his  favourite  study  was  a  cave  on  the  island  of 
Salamis  that  fronted  the  sea ;  "  from  which  cause  also  he  draws 
the  greater  part  of  his  similes  from  the  sea."  *  That  is  natural 
enough,  and  what  a  picture  it  suggests  of  the  man,  with  the 
worn  face  that  we  know  and  remember  from  the  portrait  busts, 
reading  his  philosophers  in  the  quiet  place,  till  tired  and 
perplexed  he  lays  down  his  book  and  looks  at  the  sea  and  the 
birds.  Those  glimpses  of  the  sea  and  of  the  birds  come  back 
in  his  poetry,  till  one  can  almost  smell  the  sea  and  watch  the 
birds.    To  this  we  must  return. 

A  poet  in  the  fifth  century,  deeply  read  in  the  books  of 
Ihe  philosophers,  full  of  the  sense  of  the  beauty  and  wonder 
of  the  world,  sea  and  land,  perplexed  too  by  human  life — 
where  else  could  he  find  that  opening  for  the  expression  of 
himself  that  Tragedy  gave  ?     No  other  mode  of  poetry  offered 

^  Pericles,  2. 

2  In  the  Athenian  expedition  that  failed,  459-454  b.c. 

^  Athenaeus,  i.  p.  3.  For  a  contemporary  Ubrary,  see  Xen.  Mem. 
iv.  2,  I,  the  young  Euthydemos  ypafi/xaTa  rroXXa  a-weiKeyyiivov  iroiTjrav 
re  (cat  crotpicrTcov  rStv  evdoKifiaTaTcov. 

*  Aulus  GeUius  quotes  the  story  from  Philochorus,  N.A.  xv.  20,  5. 

Cf.  Vita,  59  &. 


EURIPIDES  139 

such  scope  for  the  utterance  of  the  strange  conflict  that  the 
sentient  spirit  knows  in  such  times  : 

Now  believing. 
Now  disbelieving ;  endlessly  perplexed 
With  impulse,  motive,  right  and  wrong,  the  ground 
Of  obligation,  what  the  rule  and  whence 
The  sanction. 

There  is  so  much  that  seems  sound  and  true,  and  in  sheer 
contrast  and  opposition  stands  as  much.  The  spirit  is  torn  this 
way  and  that  in  the  war  of  good  with  good,  and  right  with  right. 
And  the  feehng  grows  and  deepens  that  if  all  this  could  but 
find  expression,  matters  would  be  helped  forward — as  if  once 
the  problem  were  fairly  stated,  the  solution  would  be  something 
nearer.  It  was  in  some  such  mood,  one  would  suppose,  that 
Goethe  said  that  man  is  not  born  to  solve  the  problem  of  the 
universe  but  to  find  out  wherein  it  consists. 

So  to  Tragedy  Euripides  turned,  and  from  455  when  he  v^^as 
some  twenty-five  years  of  age  till  his  death  in  406,  he  spent 
his  life  in  writing  plays  for  the  festivals  of  Athens.     Sometinies, 
it  is  more  than  likely,  his  plays  were  not  presented.     Five 
times  in  these  years  he  was  awarded  the  prize,  which  often  fell 
to   Sophocles.     Oth^;r  and  lesser  men  eclipsed  him  —  in  415 
"  Xenocles,  whoever  he  may  have  been,"  as  an  ancient  writer 
puts  it,  produced  a  play  that  won  the  prize  against  the  Troades. 
Other  things  he  wrote,  we  are  told — an  ode  for  Alcibiades 
when  three  of  his  chariots  were  "  placed  "  at  Olympia  in  416  ^ — 
an  epitaph  for  the  Athenians  who  fell  at  Syracuse.^     But  he 
was  not  popular  in  a  general  sense — ^he  was  attacked  furiously 
by  Aristophanes,  and  he  felt  the  ill  will  of  his  fellow-citizensj 
and  at  last  left  Athens,  as  Aeschylus  did  sixty  years  before, 
never  to  return.     He  went  to  the  court  of  King  Archelaos  of 
Macedon,  and  there  at  seventy  he  wrote  the  Bacchae,  the  play 
of  all  his  plays  where  men  find  most  the  note  of  freedom  and 
escape — escape  from  the  sea  and  its  storms,  the  haven  reached 
and  toils  ended.     So  indeed  it  proved.     Two  years  later  he 
died  and  was  buried  in  the  strange  land  of  refuge  (406).^ 

Yet  his  life  had  not  been  one  without  friendship   and 
recognition.     The  invitation  of  King  Archelaos  was  one  proof 

1  Plut.  Alcib.  II.     Cf.  Chapter  IV.  p.  1 17. 

2  Plut.  Nicias,  17.  ^  Cf.  Chapter  III.  p.  68. 


140  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  this.  But  other  proof  was  forthcoming  in  a  strange  quarter, 
for -when  the  Syracusan  expedition  came  to  its  horrible  end 
and  "  of  the  many  who  went  forth  few  returned  home,"^  of 
these  survivors  "  no  small  number,"  we  read,  "  greeted 
Euripides  with  warmth,  and  told,  some,  how,  when  enslaved, 
they  had  been  set  free  Ipr  teaching  all  they  knew  of  his  poetry, 
and  others,  how,  as  they  wandered  about  after  the  battle,  they 
were  given  food  and  water  for  singing  his  songs."  ^ 

Many  such,  he  said, 
Returning  home  to  Athens,  sought  him  out, 
The  old  bard  in  the  sohtary  house, 
And  thanked  him  ere  they  went  to  sacrifice.' 

It  is  a  remarkable  testimony  to  the  wide  appeal  of  Euripides 
to  the  Greek  world  at  large,  and  it  may  serve  to  explain  the 
extraordinary  vigour  with  which  Aristophanes  assailed  him. 
For  it  suggests  a  fairly  close  acquaintance  of  the  Athenian 
people  in  general  with  his  plays,  even  if  they  did  not  give  him 
prizes,  and  a  good  deal  of  verbal  memory  of  his  dramas.  It 
also  explains  how  Aristophanes  can  parody  him  so  much  and 
yet  hope  to  reach  his  audience  with  his  misquotations. 

In  three  plays  which  survive  Aristophanes  has  introduced 
Euripides  as  a  character  and  always  in  the  same  spirit.  Through 
the  whole  of  his  criticism  may  be  felt  a  hatred  that  is  not  less 
real  for  being  tinged  by  fascination.  For  Aristophanes  was 
himself  attacked  on  the  stage  "  for  mocking  Euripides  and 
then  imitating  him."  *  It  is  not  admiration,  but  he  cannot 
keep  his  mind  off  him.  Standing  with  the  middle  class  and 
farmer  party,  a  conservative  in  grain  as  became  a  young 
gentleman  of  parts,  he  mistrusted  the  whole  democratic 
movement  of  the  day  —  the  downgrade  tendencies  in  art, 
philosophy,  politics,  and  religion  ;  and  he  saw  clearly  enough 
that  the  cause  was  one  and  the  same,  the  spirit  of  criticism. 
The  leaders  in  this  disruption  of  society  were  obviously 
Euripides  and  Socrates  ;  the  Cleons  and  sausage-sellers  stood 
on  a  lower  plane.  So  to  Euripides  and  Socrates  he  devoted 
himself.  He  was  shrewd  enough  to  see  that  to  meet  them  on 
their  own  ground  would  be  to  concede  the  whole  position. 
Criticism,  if  met  by  argument,  would  have  secured  its  own 

1  Thuc.  vii.  end.  ^  Plut.  Nicias,  29,  2. 

^  Balaustion's  Adventure.  *  Schol.  Plato,  p.  330  (Bekker)  A. 


EURIPIDES  141 

ends.  He  would  attack  from  ground  of  his  own  choosing 
and  drive  them  off  the  field.  This  is  the  weakness  of  his 
polemic,  that  he  does  not  attempt,  and  does  not  intend,  to 
assaU  his  enemy's  centre.  Every  kind  of  flank  movement — 
witty,  vicious,  shameful — ^he  will  try  ;  and  if  he  cannot  laugh 
them  out  of  a  hearing  and  perhaps  out  of  Athens,  it  will  be  a 
pity.  But  controversy  is  never  successful  in  the  long  run, 
unless  the  enemy's  centre  is  broken.  Aristophanes  succeeded 
with  his  contemporaries,  with  those,  at  least,  who  preferred 
"  the  unexamined  life,"  with  those  who  still  prefer  it  ;  but 
the  forward  movement  of  the  human  mind  is  not  to  be  hei4 
up  by  banter,  even  if  it  is  banter  of  genius. 

Aristophanes  began  with  Euripides'  books  and  his  mothei;. 
The  Tragic  poet  got  his  ideas  out  of  other  men's  books — to  an 
audience  that  read  little  the  charge  of  "  bookishness  "  would 
appeal ;  and  his  mother  sold  vegetables.  What  lies  behind 
this  charge  we  do  not  know,  but  the  joke  never  grew  stale, 
and  it  receives  many  forms,  some  of  them  witty.  This  style 
of  abuse  and  the  number  of  years  over  which  it  was  spread 
suggest  that  if  in  the  Thesmophoriazusae  (of  411  B.C.)  Aristo- 
phanes had  no  vilification  for  the  wife  of  Euripides,  either  to 
quote  or  to  invent,  the  mean  tales  of  a  later  day  may  be 
dismissed. 

When  Aristophanes  fairly  comes  to  Euripides  himself, 
his  criticism  turns  upon  his  art  and  his  philosophy — proper 
subjects  for  criticism  in  any  case.  As  for  his  art,  Euripides  was 
spoiling  Tragedy  ;  the  legends  he  chose  for  treatment  were 
better  left  to  be  forgotten,  and  his  methods  of  treating  them 
were  aesthetically  ridiculous.  Hero  and  demigod  come  upon 
his  stage  in  rags  and  tatters ;  they  talk  out  of  books,  about 
anything,  whether  suited  to  the  tragic  stage  or  not — and  they 
talk  at  such  length,  too,  in  their  long  debates  ;  they  use 
language  that  is  modem,  subtle,  and  trifling,  nothing  like  the 
diction  of  Aeschylus — quibbling,  hair-splitting  jargoners,  one 
and  all  of  them.  His  plays  cannot  go  of  themselves  ;  they 
need  a  prologue  of  explanation,  always  constructed  on  the 
same  humdrum  lines,  and  beginning  with  the  same  tjrpe  of 
sentence.  He  always  attacks  women — as  if  he  needed  to  ; 
as  if  honest  women  didn't  go  home  and  drink  hemlock  for 
very  shame  at  his  plays.    Lastly,  the  music  is  all  modem  and 


142  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

undignified.  Perhaps  the  happiest  stroke  in  all  this  is  the 
choric  ode  in  the  Frogs,  where  "  Aeschylus  "  burlesques  the 
Euripidean  style  in  a  song  of  stolen  poultry — awful  with 
Night,  dark-gleaming,  and  the  soul-less  soul  of  a  dead  phantom, 
a  thing  to  be  expiated,  and  then  the  terrible  discovery  that  the 
bird  is  gone,  and  Nymph  and  scullery-maid,  and  the  Cretans, 
Ida's  children  and  Dictynna,  are  all  invoked  in  passionate 
phrase  with  duplicated  words  and  trilled  syllables  to  find  and 
bring  back  the  lost  bird. 

On  Art,  Euripides  was  liable  to  attack,  as  Aristophanes 
saw,  for  he  occupied  a  half-way  position.  The  tragic  mode  was 
old — the  type  of  legend  to  be  treated  was  fixed,  the  chorus  was 
an  established  necessity,  and  each  had  become  an  embarrass- 
ment to  the  poet.  He  needed  more  freedom  and  he  might  not 
have  it.  The  ideas  and  the  outlook  on  life  were  new,  and  not 
easy  to  adapt  to  the  old  framework,  but  it  had  to  be  done.  The 
much  parodied  prologue  was  an  attempt  to  relieve  things. 
The  chorus  was  a  terrible  difficulty — a  dozen  or  fifteen  persons 
always  present,  to  overhear  every  secret  on  which  the  plot 
turns  and  not  to  reveal  them.  It  must  be  owned  that  Euri- 
pides, tied  to  this  necessity,  turned  it  after  all  to  good  purpose. 
Such  odes  as  those  in  the  Hippolytus  (1.  731)  and  -the  Troades 
(1.  794)  have  a  wonderful  psychological  effect,  placed  as  they 
are,  in  varying  the  emotional  pitch  ^ — on  the  variation  of 
which  so  much  in  a  play  depends — and  in  giving  the  mind  and 
heart  of  reader  and  spectator  at  least  a  hint  of  where  the  clue 
is  to  be  found  which  shall  lead  to  peace. 

When  Aristophanes  attacked  Euripides'  philosophy,  he  was 
at  once  on  safer  ground  and  less  secure.  It  was  safer  because 
he  had  his  audience  more  entirely  with  him — they  understood 
and  they  approved.  But  the  criticism  is  essentially  external, 
and  there  it  breaks  down,  Aristophanes  charges  Euripides 
with  teaching  atheism,  sophistry,  and  immorality.  Zeus  is 
driven  out  and  Aether  takes  his  place.  The  prayer  of  Euripides 
in  the  Frogs  is  not  to  the  gods  men  know  and  recognize,  like 
the  honourable  and  dignified  address  which  Aeschylus  makes 

^  I  borrow  Mr.  A.  C.  Bradley's  phrase  from  one  of  those  discussions 
of  Shakespeare,  which  I  have  found  more  helpful  for  the  understand- 
ing of  Greek  drama  than  much  which  has  been  written  directly 
about  it. 


EURIPIDES  143 

to  Demeter ;  they  are  gods  of  a  "  brand-new  coinage," 
"  private  gods  "  : 

Aether  whereon  I  batten  !     Vocal  chords  ! 
Reason,  and  nostrils  swift  to  scent  and  sneer, 
Grant  that  I  duly  probe  each  word  I  hear.^ 

Why  Earth  should  be  a  legitimate  deity  and  Aether  not, 
it  would  be  hard  to  say,  if  Air  had  not  been  playing  a  largt; 
part  in  contemporary  speculations  as  to  the  nature  of  the  soul 
and  of  God.  But  to  come  to  human  life  and  conduct,  all  this 
emphasis  on  Phaedras  and  Stheneboias  could  only  mean  im- 
morality ;  and  a  famous  line  in  the  Hippolytus  definitely  taught 
perjury  and  justified  it — "  the  tongue  has  sworn  :  the  mind 
remains  unsworn."  The  last  few  lines  of  the  trial  scene  be- 
tween Aeschylus  and  Euripides  may  stand  as  an  example  of 
the  whole.  The  god  Dionysos,  at  whose  festival  the  tragedies 
were  played,  has  gone  down  into  Hades  to  fetch  up  Euripides, 
but  in  a  succession  of  parodies  things  go  otherwise. 

Dion,  My  tongue  hath  sworn  ;  but  I'll  choose  Aeschylus. 

Eur.  What  have  you  done,  you  traitor  ? 

Dion.  I  ?     I've  judged 

That  Aeschylus  gets  the  prize.     Why  shouldn't  I  ? 

Eur.  Canst  meet  mine  eyes,  fresh  from  thy  deed  of  shame  ? 

Dion.   What  is  shame,  that  the  .  .  .  Theatre  deems  no  shame  ? 

Eur.  Hard  heart !    You  mean  to  leave  your  old  friend  dead  ? 

Dion.  Who  knoweth  if  to  live  is  hut  to  die  P 
If  breath  is  bread,  and  sleep  a  woolly  lie  ?  ^ 

And  that  is  the  end  of  Euripides.  Who  knows  if  life  be  not 
death  ?     Let  him  stay  dead. 

Tragedy  was  the  work  of  Euripides,  but  as  Plato  said 
Tragedy  and  Comedy  came  from  the  same  hand,  and  the  man 
who  made  the  one  could  make  the  other. ^  The  Tragic  poet 
had  Satyric  dramas  on  which  to  show  what  he  could  do  with 
a  lighter  touch.  Till  lately  but  one  Satjnric  drama  survived, 
so  that  to  generalize  or  to  particularize  from  it  is  dangerous. 
But  if  the  style  and  manner  of  the  Cyclops  are  partly  traditional, 
none  the  less  it  is  true  that  Euripides  here  saw  his  chance  and 

^  Frogs,  892  (Professor  Murray's  translation).  l8ia>Tais  deois  is  the 
phrase  preceding. 

"  Professor  Murray's  translation.     I  have  italicized  the  quotations, 
'  Plato,  Symposium,  223  c,  d. 


144  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

took  it.  In  this  play  Odysseus — not  the  maHgn  figure  of 
Tragedy,  but  a  nobler  Odysseus  nearer  the  Homeric — is  con- 
fronted with  Cyclops,  Silenus,  and  Satyr,  who,  it  appears, 
have  every  taste  and  instinct  of  the  average  hero  of  an 
Aristophanic  comedy.  They  are  frankly  sensual,  thoroughly 
gluttonous,  rank  cowards,  cruel  and  superstitious ;  and  their 
outlook  on  life  is  that  which  Plato  drew  in  Callicles  in  the 
Gorgias — the  spirit  that  made  the  Melian  massacre,  and  many 
other  shameful  deeds.     The  humour  is  grim. 

Hatred  led  Aristophanes  to  lay  his  finger  on  the  two  main- 
springs of  the  thought  of  Euripides — if  so  mechanical  a  meta- 
phor may  be  used  of  thought — passion  and  question.  As  we 
study  the  man  with  the  closer  attention  of  those  who  love  him, 
we  find  here  as  elsewhere  that  passion  and  question  are  not  to 
be  severed.  They  act  and  react  upon  each  other,  and  it  is 
perhaps  passion  that  calls  question  into  being. 

Wer  nie  sein  Brod  mit  Tranen  ass, 

Wer  nie  die  kummervoUe  Nachte 

Auf  seinem  Bette  weinend  sass, 

Der  kennt  euch  nicht,  ihr  himmlischen  Machte. 

Whatever  it  be  with  philosophers,  with  poets  philosophy  is 
the  child  of  pain.     They  feel 

The  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 

and  feeling  it  they  are  more  apt  to  get  aright  the  first  elements 
of  the  problem. 

'Tis  not  the  calm  and  tranquil  breast 
That  sees  and  reads  the  problem  true, 
They  only  know  on  whom  't  has  prest, 
Too  hard  to  hope  to  solve  it  too. 

So  Goethe  and  two  of  our  own  great  poets  tell  us,  and  it  is 
true  of  the  rest.  Of  Euripides,  Nestle  says  that  "  passionate 
feeling  is  the  ultimate  source  of  all  his  criticism."  ^ 

"  There  is  great  confusion,"  says  his  Orestes,  "  among  things 
divine,  yes,  and  mortal  affairs  too."  ^  It  is  the  complaint  we 
remember  that  Hamlet  made.  There  is  a  want  of  certainty, 
where  most  of  all  certainty  should  be,  about  the  gods  and  all 
that  concerns  them.^ 

1  Nestle,  Euripides,  p.  26.       '^  Iph.  Taur.  572.        *  Eur.  H.F.  62. 


EURIPIDES  145 

O  Zeus  !  what  shall  I  say  ?  that  thou  seest  men  ? 
Or  that  they  hold  this  doctrine  all  in  vain, 
And  Chance  rules  everything  among  mankind  ?  ^ 

What  is  one  to  say  ?  Euripides  went  to  his  books — in  a  passion 
to  know  the  truth  ;  and  there  he  found  many  things  written, 
and  much  that  interested  him,  for  it  came  back  into  his  mind 
at  moments  when  we  should  not  have  expected  it,  and  finds 
expression  from  the  lips  of  the  characters  in  his  plays.  They 
too  have  a  speculative  habit — and  this  in  a  higher  degree  than 
we  should  be  apt  to  think  in  our  current  judgments  of  ordinary 
people.  But  perhaps  Euripides  is  nearer  the  truth — and 
ordinary  people  do  touch  the  deep  questions  under  stress  of 
pain.  Much  then  that  was  in  the  books  breaks  out — curiously, 
as  some  would  say ;  naturally,  as  others  would  have  it — from 
the  lips  of  men  and  women  in  the  plays.  Most  of  all  the  last 
word  in  the  books — ^for  the  saying  of  Xenophanes — 

86kos  S'  €7ri  Tracri  rervKTai. — 

that  guess-work  is  over  all,  seems  terribly  like  the  conclusion 
of  the  whole  matter.  And  yet  it  cannot  be  ;  there  must  be 
truth,  and  it  must  be  found  somehow.  Euripides  will  not  be 
satisfied  to  guess  ;  he  must  know.  Meantime  he  seems  to 
sway  this  way  and  that — that  is,  if  we  follow  the  plan  of 
Aristophanes  and  take  every  dramatic  utterance  in  any  play 
as  the  poet's  own,  which  is  bad  criticism  as  a  rule.  Here  it 
is  more  tolerable,  one  feels.  If  the  character  says  this  or 
the  other  thing,  the  poet  has  felt  it  at  some  time.  We  reach 
the  conclusion  that  Euripides  is  not  a  man  with  a  system  or 
a  dogma.  His  heart  has  been  the  battle-ground  of  many 
thoughts,  and  his  very  face  in  the  portrait  bust  shows  it.  Like 
such  men,  he  is  full  of  contradictions — ^he  loves  to  question,  and 
is  weary  of  it  and  longs  for  certainty.  But  it  cannot  be  found  ; 
so  we  will  give  up  the  quest ;  yes,  let  us  give  it  up — which 
means,  we  will  go  on  with  it. 

Philosophers  with  their  guesses  stand  on  this  side  ;  and  on 
the  other  side  are  priests  and  mystics  with  their  certaintici: 
Shall  it  be  rationalism  or  mysticism  ?     But  rationalism  leave, 
so    much    unexplained,   and    mysticism  frankly  leaves    the 
facts  behind  ;   and  no  system  yet  manages,  however  it  is,  to 

1  Eur.  Hec.  488. 


146  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

catch  the  real  smell  and  sound  and  colour  of  the  sea,  for  instance. 
There  it  is,  on  the  beach  below,  and  the  sea-birds  are  busy 
over  it,  and  everywhere  in  the  rocks  above  him  is  the  noise  of 
the  broods  in  the  nests.  Has  not  the  sea  something  to  say  ? 
But  the  philosophers  have  their  eyes  on  elements  and  causes, 
and  the  mystics  with  their  eyes  shut  are  preaching  abstinence 
from  flesh  and  a  number  of  abstract  notions.  Then  there  is 
life  and  its  confusions — what  heals  them  ?  Not  "  conjecture 
that  is  over  all."  Can  it  be  the  mystics  have  something  to 
say  here  ? 

"  Surely,"  the  chorus  sings  in  the  Hippolytus^  "  surely 
with  power  do  the  thoughts  of  the  gods,  when  they  come  into 
my  heart,  take  away  sorrow  ;  but  ^vveaiv  Be  nv  eX-TrtSt  KevOmv 
— [let  us  leave  the  Greek  untranslated  for  a  moment] — I  faint, 
as  I  look  on  the  chances  that  fall  to  men  and  on  the  deeds  they 
do ;  it  is  confusion,  all,  and  life  passes  away  for  men,  full  of 
wandering  and  change  for  ever." 

It  is  the  old  problem  as  to  action  and  consequence.  Good 
should  come  to  the  good,  and  evil  to  the  evil,  if  the  gods  are 
just ;  but  it  does  not  happen  so, — at  least  so  far  as  we  see, — 
and  the  heart  sinks  within  a  man.  But  let  us  look  at  the 
untranslated  phrase,  which  is  rather  obscure — "  concealing 
some  [tlvo)  understanding  with  hope  "  might  be  a  clumsy 
literal  translation.  One  wonders  what  he  means.  I  cannot 
help  thinking  it  is  something  like  this.  There  is  understanding 
of  a  sort,  which  goes  to  a  certain  point,  which  sees  things  so 
far  clearly  enough — even  too  clearly ;  things  fall  amiss,  per- 
plexingly ;  understanding  gives  out,  and  we  are  left  stranded  ; 
and  then  hope  suggests  another  way  of  it.  But  is  it  possible 
that  hope  is  only  a  coloured  glass,  after  all,  which  confuses 
what  understanding  shows  us  so  plainly — that  it  is  merely 
a  form  of  wishing  things  to  be  other  than  they  are  ?  What 
right  has  wishing  to  impose  its  fancies  on  the  facts  of  under- 
standing ?  Ah  !  but  it  does  ;  and  then  the  poet  looks  at  the 
facts  again,  and  they  are  hard  and  unintelligible  still.  Whether 
this  rendering  of  the  passage  is  sound  or  not,  it  seems  to  me 
to  represent  the  attitude  of  Euripides  to  life.  There  stand 
the  facts,  and  the  whole  heart  cries  out  for — it  hardly  knows 

^Hippolytus,  1103-1110.  Professor  Murray's  translation  of  the 
phrase  left  in  Greek  I  cannot  believe  to  be  right. 


EURIPIDES  147 

what ;  for  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  perhaps,  where  things  shall 
be  mended,  where  at  least  severed  kindred  and  parted  friends 
may  meet — for  gods  who  care  for  men.  -The  mystics  held 
out  hopes  of  both  ;  they  trafficked  in  hopes.  And  Euripides 
saw  painfully  that  hope  is  after  all — ^hope.  Thus  far  the  facts 
take  him ;  hope  suggests  one  more  step,  but  he  will  go  no 
further  than  he  sees  the  facts  go.  His  heart  feels  the  wrench 
— ^the  pull  of  things  beyond  the  line,  but  at  the  line  he  stops. 
That  is  characteristic.  It  is  the  struggle  of  the  great,  deep, 
sentient,  human-hearted  poet  with  his  own  awful,  irresistible 
logic  ;  and  because  it  is  such  a  struggle  that  appears  in  all  his 
work,  he  remains  the  poet  of  all  time,  for  in  every  age  the  old 
struggle  goes  on  between  what  the  understanding  categorically 
says  IS  and  what  the  heart  insists  must  be. 

Aristophanes  declares  roundly  tha,t  Euripides  in  his  tragedies 
taught  men  and  women  that  there  are  no  gods.  It  would  be 
fairer  to  say  that  Bellerophon  in  anguish  cries  out  that  there 
are  none.  For  when  we  turn  to  the  plays  we  find  plenty  of 
gods  and  goddesses  in  them ;  and  yet  Aristophanes  is  in  a 
sense  right.  Professor  Verrall's  well-known  books  would  suggest 
that  Euripides  can  have  thought  of  little  but  polemic  against 
the  gods.  This  I  do  not  at  all  believe.  Yet  there  is  criticism 
of  a  most  penetrative  character.  Throughout  antiquity  from 
Plato  to  the  Christian  apologists  we  find  that  the  main  source 
of  criticism  of  the  traditional  gods  was  moral  feeling.  Already 
in  Homer  the  heroes,  mortal  men  as  they  are,  stand  on  a  higher 
moral  plane  than  the  gods;  and  while  a  moral  progress  is 
marked  in  the  thinking  of  the  Greek  world,  the  gods  of  popular 
tradition  never  caught  up  with  the  better  and  purer  natures 
of  actual  men.  They  were  left  behind  ;  and  when  men  thought 
of  them  they  conceived  them  to  be  actuated  by  motives 
beneath  those  of  the  purer  spirits  among  their  fellows — ^by 
love  of  power,  lust,  spite,  and  the  sheer  fancy  to  use  their 
half-omnipotence  in  an  arbitrary  way.  Against  this  view 
thinkers  had  long  been  in  revolt,  and  if  it  was  atheism  in 
Euripides  to  let  one  of  his  characters  cry : 

If  gods  do  deeds  of  shame,  the  less  gods  they  ! 

then  something  must  be  said  of  Aeschylus  and  Pindar,  who 
were  careful  to  reject  legends  which  told  of  ill-deeds  done  by 


148  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

gods  ^ — legends  which  none  the  less  lived  on  as  before.  The 
outlook  of  Euripides  is  different.  He  will  not  mend,  but  end 
the  legends  ;  and  he  does  it  in  a  way  of  his  own. 

Euripides  presents  the  traditional  gods  very  much  as 
tradition  gave  them.  The  usages  and  conventions  of  the  Attic 
stage  lent  themselves  to  this.  But  by  setting  the  old  gods 
with  their  old  instincts  and  their  old  deeds  in  a  new  milieu, 
and  above  all  by  letting  them  utter  in  words  the  impulses  that 
moved  them  to  do  those  deeds,  he  effected  a  tacit  criticism 
of  the  most  significant.  The  new  milieu  is  that  of  human 
suffering  ;  and  anything  more  irrelevant  to  these  old  gods, 
especially  with  their  new  and  Euripidean  frankness,  could  not 
be  conceived.  Here  they  speak  and  act — doing  no  more 
than  tradition  said.  Athena  wrecked  the  Greek  fleet  on  its 
voyage  from  Troy.  So  in  the  Troades  she  discusses  her  motives 
and  her  plans  with  Poseidon,  and  he  accepts  all.  Now,  taken 
in  themselves,  the  motives  are  pitiful  and  deviUsh,  and  the 
plans  mean  death  to  hundreds  of  innocent  creatures — and  one 
of  these  gods  actually  pictures  these  people  lying  drowned  all 
along  the  shore  of  Euboea,  That  is  tradition — not  innova- 
tion at  all ;  it  all  happened  so,  and  if  the  gods  discussed 
it,  it  must  have  been  in  this  way.  But  to  conceive  of  them 
discussing  it  at  all  was  innovation — still  more  so,  to  conceive 
of  them  doing  it  while  full  in  front  of  them  and  beneath  them 
Queen  Hecuba  lay  in  the  dust,  a  widow,  a  captive,  a  slave. 
Of  course  everybody  knew  her  story  ;  only  one  had  not  thought 
of  these  things  together — the  spite  of  Athena,  the  cold-blooded 
stupidity  of  Poseidon,  and  the  misery  of  Hecuba.  Certain 
ideas  depend  on  our  thinking  in  compartments ;  and  the 
removal  of  the  dividing  wall  is  criticism. 

Or  take  another  case.  Greek  legend  was  full  of  demigod 
heroes,  splendid  figures  of  romance  and  adventure,  sons  in 
each  case  of  a  mortal  woman  and  a  god.  Here  is  an  instance 
which  shows  how  Pindar  handled  such  a  tale. 2 

"  But  Euadne  beneath  a  thicket's  shade  put  from  her  her 
silver  pitcher  and  her  girdle  of  scarlet  web,  and  she  brought 
forth  a  boy  in  whom  was  the  spirit  of  God.  By  her  side  the 
gold-haired  god  set  kindly  Eleithuia  and  the  Fates,  and  from 

1  Cf.  Chapter  II.  p.  42. 

2  Pindar,  Olympian,  6,  39-44,  53-56  ;   Tamos  as  if  from  'lov. 


EURIPIDES  149 

her  womb  in  easy  travail  came  forth  lamos  to  the  Hght."  She 
left  him  there,  and  then  her  husband  came  from  Delphi  and 
asked  for  the  child,  for  the  god  himself  had  told  him  it  was 
the  son  of  Phoebus  and  should  be  a  prophet.  But  none 
knew, "  though  he  was  now  five  days  born.  For  he  was  hidden 
among  rushes  in  an  impenetrable  brake,  his  tender  body  all 
suffused  with  golden  and  deep  purple  gleams  of  pansy-flowers  ; 
wherefore  his  mother  prophesied  that  by  this  holy  name  of 
immortality  he  should  be  called  throughout  all  time." 

What  a  beautiful  picture  Pindar  makes  of  it — lovely  words, 
and  colours  gleaming.  And  what  a  squahd  stoiy  it  was ! 
In  the  Ion  Euripides  tells  the  same  story  of  the  same  god  and 
another  woman,  Creusa  of  Athens.  Creusa  is  the  teller,  twice, 
once  in  the  third  person  to  Ion — how  a  woman,  one  of  her 
friends  (it  is  herself,  of  course),  lay  with  a  god,  with  Phoebus, 
and  bore  him  a  child  ;  and  her  father  never  knew  ;  and  she 
exposed  it,  and  it  disappeared — perhaps  the  wild  beasts 
destroyed  it — she  never  knew ;  though  she  came  again  and 
searched  the  place  over  and  over,  she  found  no  clue ;  it  was 
gone.i  Later  on  she  tells  it  in  the  first  person ;  she  had  not 
consented,  she  says,  but  Apollo  had  his  way ;  and  then  "  I 
bore  him  a  child  "  ;  and  "  he  is  dead,  exposed  to  the  beasts." 
"  Dead  ?  "  says  her  listener,  "  and  the  false  Apollo  (0  KaKo<i) 
never  helped  ?  "  "He  did  not  help  ..."  "  Who  exposed 
the  child  ?  "  "I  did  it,  in  the  darkness,  wrapped  in  swaddling 
clothes."  "  But  how  couldst  thou  bear  to  leave  thy  child 
in  the  cave  ?  "  "If  thou  hadst  seen  the  baby  reach  his  hands 
to  me  ...  I  thought  the  god  would  save  his  own  son."  ^ 

O  Athens,  what  thy  diff  hath  seen  ! 
It  saw  the  ravished  maiden's  pang, 
The  babe  she  bore  to  Phoebus  there 
Cast  to  the  talon  and  the  fang. 
There,  on  the  same  insulting  scene  ! 

Of  any  born 
'Twixt  god  and  man  none  ever  sang, 
None  ever  told  but  tales  forlorn. 

O  Athens,  what  thy  cliff  hath  seen  !  ^ 

So  sings  the  chorus,  and  at  the  play's  end  Apollo  sends  Athena 
to  put  all  right — he  would  not  come  himself,  said  the  sister 

1  Ion,  330-352.  2  Ion,  940-960  (abridged), 

'  Ion,  500-508  (Dr.  Verrall's  translation,  or  paraphrase  rather). 


150  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

goddess,  "  lest  there  should  be  reproach  for  what  is  past."  i   It  is 
always  the  same  with  the  traditional  gods— they  are  not  touched 
by  moral  considerations  ;  they  have  no  regard  for  human  feel- 
ing ;  they  are  beyond  good  and  evil.     And  the  sacrifices  and 
the  offerings,  the  temples  and  the  ceremonies  and  the  festivals— 
My  heart,  my  heart  crieth,  O  Lord  Zeus  on  high, 
Were  they  all  to  thee  as  nothing,  thou  throned  in  the  sky. 
Throned  in  the  fire-cloud,  where  a  City,  near  to  die, 
Passeth  in  the  wind  and  the  flare  ?  2 

It  is  the  question  of  a  captive  Trojan  woman  in  the  Troades, 
and  another  answers  : 

Dear  one,  O  husband  mine. 

Thou  in  the  dim  dominions 
Driftest  with  waterless  lips 
Unburied  ;  and  me  the  ships 
Shall  bear  o'er  the  bitter  brine. 

Storm-birds  upon  angry  pinions, 
Where  the  towers  of  the  Giants  shine 
O'er  Argos  cloudily. 
And  the  riders  ride  by  the  sea.^ 

Again,  the  same  question  :    does  human  suffering  touch  the 
gods  in  their  happiness  ?     If  it  does  not,  are  they  gods  ? 

Ah  !  but  !  said  the  Orphic  teachers,  this  is  to  look  at 
things  from  outside  ;  the  gods  may  be  known  better  and 
understood.  So  to  the  Orphics  Euripides  listened,  and  we 
can  gather  his  conclusion  from  one  or  two  allusions.  They 
practised  abstinence.  "  Go  now,"  cries  the  angry  Theseus  to 
his  son,  'i  go  and  boast,  and  with  thy  life-less  food,  juggle  with 
thy  meats ;  have  Orpheus  for  thy  king,  and  revel,  honouring  the 
smoke  of  many  books  ;  for  thou  art  taken  !  Such  I  bid  all 
men  flee  ;  for  they  hunt  with  words  of  awe,  and  foulness  is  in 
their  thoughts."  *  The  Satyrs  in  the  den  of  the  Cyclops  will 
not  help  Odysseus  to  twirl  the  flaming  stake  into  the  giant's 
one  eye—"  but  I  know  a  charm  of  Orpheus,  a  very  good  one, 
whereby  the  brand  of  itself  shall  go  to  his  skull  and  fire  the 
one-eyed  son  of  earth."  ^  "Much  have  I  dealt  with  the 
Muses,"  sings  the  chorus  in  the  Alcestis,  "  and  soared  on  high, 
and  many  a  reason  have  I  handled,  but  nought  stronger  than 

'  Ion,  1557.  2  Troades,  1076  f.  (Murray). 

3  Troades,  108 1  f.  (Murray).  *  Eur.  Hippolytus,  952-957. 

^  Eur.  Cyclops,  646. 


EURIPIDES  151 

Necessity  have  I  found,  neither  potion  in  Thracian  tablets, 
that  sweet-voiced  Orpheus  wrote,  nor  amongst  all  that 
Phoebus  gave  to  the  sons  of  Asclepios."  There  is  no  cure  for 
death  ;  Orphism  alters  no  facts,  and  it  reveals  none. 

What,  then,  is  the  view  of  Euripides — if  he  has  one — if  he 
has  several  ?  Is  it  possible  that  the  gods  of  his  plays — of 
some  of  his  plays — are  not  merely  figments  of  a  foolish  past, 
but  symbols  somehow  of  something  that  works  in  Nature  ? 
Aphrodite,  in  the  Hippolytus,  what  is  she  ?  A  cruel  fiend- 
goddess — or  the  dark  inexplicable  force  of  passion  that  wrecks 
men  and  women  upon  one  another  in  this  world,  the  good 
turned  to  evU,  the  great  principle  that  makes  homes  and 
happiness  turned  astray  and  crashing  through  human  lives 
to  no  purpose  ?  Does  she  represent  a  force  of  nature,  or  a 
law  of  nature  ?  Artemis  in  the  same  play  is  more  easily 
dealt  with — she  is  the  mystic's  goddess,  heard,  but  never  seen, 
only  known  by  a  sweetness  and  a  fragrance  ;  and  she  leaves 
him  in  the  hour  of  disaster  to  face  ruin  alone — she  wUl  not 
save  him,  Euripides  says  ;  and  when  death  comes  on  him,  and 
he  is  "  near  this  evil,"  she  must  go  ;  she  must  not  let  her 
face  be  defiled  with  the  breath  of  death.  Such  are  the  gods 
of  the  mystics,  he  seems  to  say.  But  blind  brute  forces  of 
nature  do  not  help  us  much.     Does  he  go  further  ? 

He  seems  at  times  to  lean  to  a  doctrine  associated  with 
the  name  of  Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  who  lived  in  Athens  in 
his  days — a  doctrine  that  Air  is  the  universal  substance  or 
being.  "  By  means  of  air,"  says  Diogenes,  "  all  are  steered, 
and  over  all  air  has  power.  For  this  very  thing  seems  to  me  to 
be  God,  and  I  believe  that  it  reaches  to  everything  and  dis- 
poses everything  and  is  present  in  everything  ;  "  and  else- 
where he  calls  the  air  within  us,  that  is,  our  reason,  "  a  little 
part  of  God."  ^  Something  very  like  this  comes  several 
times  in  Euripides  : 

Seest  thou  the  boundless  aether  there  on  high. 
That  folds  the  earth  around  with  dewy  arms  ? 
This  deem  thou  Zeus,  this  reckon  one  with  God.^ 

^  Cf.  Adam,  Vitality  of  Platonism,  p.  44,  from  which  I  borrow  the 
translation.  The  fragments  of  Diogenes  are  in  Diels,  Vorsokratiker, 
No.  51,  and  in  Ritter  and  Preller,  Nos.  164,  169. 

*  Eur.  Frag.  941  ;  translated  by  A.  S,  Way. 


152  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  in  a  lyric  passage  : 

Thee,  self-begotten,  who  in  aether  rolled 

Ceaselessly  round,  by  mystic  links  dost  bind 

The  nature  of  all  things,  whom  veils  enfold 

Of  light,  of  dark  night,  flecked  with  gleams  of  gold. 

Of  star-hosts  dancing  round  thee  without  end.^ 

But  it  is  to  a  passage  in  the  Troades  that  scholars  are  apt 
to  turn  to  find  a  fuller  confession  of  faith.  It  is  spoken  by 
Hecuba  when  she  learns  that  Menelaus  will  kill  Helen,  and  so 
Troy  will  be  avenged.  There  are  editors  who  have  cried  out 
on  the  anachronism  and  general  unlikeliness  of  Hecuba  uttering 
so  profoundly  philosophical  a  prayer.  Indeed,  Menelaus,  who 
is  not  very  bright,  notices  as  much — he  thinks  it  a  strange 
prayer  ;  and  the  editors  remark  that  she  does  not  explain 
it  to  him.  Why  should  she  ?  He  had  had  no  lesson  of  pain 
to  enable  him  to  understand  her — a  commonplace  successful 
man. 

0  stay  of  earth,  who  hast  thy  seat  on  earth. 
Whoe'er  thou  art,  ill-guessed  and  hard  to  know, 
Zeus,  whether  Nature's  law,  or  mind  of  man, 

1  pray  to  thee  ;  for  on  a  noiseless  path 

All  mortal  things  by  justice  thou  dost  guide.^ 

The  "  stay  of  earth  "  may  be  the  air  on  which  earth  rests, 
with  which  the  "  mind  of  man  "  may  be  identical,  for  Diogenes 
and  '  doubtless  Euripides  were  influenced  by  Anaxagoras ; 
but  let  us  remember  that  Vv^e  are  dealing  with  a  great  poet. 
If  Zeus  is  aether,  and  if  (as  we  shall  shortly  see)  the  human 
soul  is  also  aether,  we  have  a  great  kinship  established.  In 
any  case  earth  needs  a  spiritual  stay  as  well  as  air  beneath  it 
to  uphold  it,  and  so  he  conceives  Zeus — the  great  Reality  on 
whom  earth  and  all  its  affairs  rest — the  great  Reality  visible 
in  his  creation  ;  his  seat  is  on  earth.  And  what  is  he  ?  He 
is  hard  to  guess  at,  hard  to  know — our  common  experience  ; 
but  whether  the  great  Law  that  is  the  force  driving  the  vast 
whole,  or  of  one  substance  with  the  human  heart  and  mind — 
for  vov<i  is  not  the  one  without  the  other — one  thing  stands 
out  :  His  rule  is  Justice ;  to  Justice  he  guides  all  things, 
noiseless  as  his  path  may  be.  "  There  is  no  speech  nor 
language,  their  voice  is  not  heard."  Something  is  reached  here 
1  Eur.  Frag.  593  ;  translated  by  A.  S.  Way.         ^  Troades,  884-888. 


EURIPIDES  153 

for  the  human  soul — there  is  Justice  in  God.  True,  Hecuba's 
hope  of  seeing  justice  is  quenched  very  soon — poor  Hecuba  ! 
but  the  poet  sees  further,  and  deeper,  and  in  the  long  run,  in 
pain  and  prosperity,  or  in  spite  of  them,  God's  Justice  is  done. 
Justice  is  of  the  essence  of  things  in  a  cosmos — it  is  "  the 
Weltgeist,  the  World- Reason,  immanent  in  the  World,  active 
in  the  spiritual  and  moral  sphere  as  in  the  material — it  lives 
and  moves  in  the  feeling  and  thinking  and  acting  of  every 
man,  and  in  the  infinite  and  imperishable  universe  (Weliall)."  ^ 
It  is  a  deeper  doctrine  than  the  Orphics  taught  of  a  god  who 
measured  things  by  their  rituals. 

The  passage  we  have  been  studying  hints  at  the  conception 
of  the  nature  of  the  soul  to  which  Euripides  leaned.  We 
have  to  remember  that  for  the  ancient  world  the  modern 
antithesis  of  spirit  and  matter  hardly  existed.  The  Stoic 
conceived  of  the  soul  as  material  though  subtle.  St.  Augustine 
tells  us  how  hard  he  found  it  to  think  of  God  as  spirit ;  when 
he  tried  to  think  of  God,  he  somehow  thought  of  infinite  but 
infinitely  subtle  matter.  So  that  it  is  not  strange  if  Euripides 
thought  of  the  soul  as  aether — many  Greeks  of  his  day  did. 
The  epitaph  on  the  Athenians  who  fell  at  Poteidaia  in  432 
contains  the  lines : 

aWfjp  /if/x  (pcrvx^^  virebexcraro  (ra>fiaTa  8e  x&wv 
Toavbe'  IloreiSata?  S'  ayi<^\  Ttukas  eXvdev,^ 

and  in  the  Helena  Euripides  says  much  the  same  : 

Albeit  the  mind 
Of  the  dead  hve  not,  deathless  consciousness 
Still  hath  it,  when  in  deathless  aether  merged.  ^ 

This  seems  to  suggest  that  there  is  no  personal  immortality. 
Nearly  every  one  in  his  day,  who  believed  in  this  and  thought 
much  about  it,  associated  personal  immortality  with  the 
transmigration  of  souls ;  but  it  has  been  remarked  that, 
though  familiar  with  this  teaching  of  Pythagoras,  Euripides 
is  not  seriously  interested  in  metempsychosis.  His  own 
attitude  is  seen  in  the  lyric,  rather  curiously  given  to  Phaedra's 
nurse  : 

^  Nestle,  Euripides,  146. 

2  Hicks  and  Hill,  Manual,  No.  54  ;  Arnold  on  Thuc.  i.  6^. 

*  Helena,  1014  (A.  S.  Way,  altered  by  Dr.  Adam). 


154  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

But  if  any  far-off  state  there  be 
Dearer  than  life  to  mortality  ; 
The  hand  of  the  Dark  hath  hold  thereof. 
And  mist  is  under  and  mist  above. 
And  so  we  are  sick  for  life,  and  cling 
On  earth  to  this  nameless  and  shining  thing. 
For  other  life  is  a  fountain  sealed, 
And  the  deeps  below  us  are  unrevealed, 
And  we  drift  on  legends  forever,  ^ 

The  great  phrase  is  Si  a'rrecpoa-vvqv  dXKov  ^lorov,  and  it  recurs 
in  a  fragment  of  another  play — "  For  Hfe  we  know,  but  through 
inexperience  of  death  every  man  fears  to  leave  the  light  of 
the  sun."  All  is  dark  beyond — the  "  non-demonstration  of 
the  things  below  earth  "  means  no  knowledge.  The  heart 
may  yearn,  but  once  more  the  understanding  says  No.  And 
yet  he  turns  almost  wistfully  to  one  Orphic  doctrine,  in  the 
famous  line  which  Aristophanes  parodied  : 

Who  knoweth  if  to  live  is  but  to  die  ? 
Tis  ol8ev  el  to  ^rjv  jxiv  icm  KurBavelv. 

It  is  the  doctrine  of  which  Plato  makes  so  much — the  equation 
of  soma  and  sema,  the  body  the  soul's  temporary  grave. 
But  who  knows  ? 

Meantime  to  express  the  common  feelings  of  men,  relative 
to  death,  he  uses  their  common  language — what  else  is  there 
for  dramatist  or  thinker  to  do  ?  And  behind  the  language 
once  more  stand  the  facts,  and  to  the  facts  he  goes — 

detpov  yap  ov8ev  rmv  dvayKaiav  fipoTols  ^  — 

nothing  that  is  inevitable  is  strange  or  terrible. 

Whether  wouldst  thou  I  tell  thee  soft  smooth  lies, 

Or  rough  gaunt  truths  ?     Speak,  it  is  thine  to  choose.* 

The  man  who  asks  such  a  question  has  chosen  for  himself. 

Back  to  the  facts  Euripides  goes — the  facts  which  a  poet 
finds — living  sentient  facts  that  vibrate  and  strike  harmonics 
in  the  human  soul.  "  Every  man  of  genius  in  a  sense  begins 
anew,"  it  has  been  said,  even  if  it  is  equally  true  that  he 
uses  all  who  have  gone  before  him  ;  and  Euripides  starts 
anew,  with  the  simple  elemental  experiences — of  pain  and 

^  Hippolytus,  191-197  (Professor  Murray's  translation),  Svarepares. 
"  Frag.  'Yylrin.  757.  *  Frag.  1036. 


EURIPIDES  155 

beauty ;  and  in  neither  case  will  half-knowledge  serve,  for 
reconciliation  is  his  business — the  business  of  all  poets. 
Poetry  has  twin  roots  in  joy  and  pain — and  God  knows  if 
they  are  not  the  same  thing.  \ 

Our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest  thought. 

Euripides  will  drink  the  bitter  cup  to  the  dregs,  as  his  Merakles 
does — 

I  am  full  fraught  with  ills — no  stowing  more/ 

and  Herakles  thinks  he  will  kill  himself ;  but  at  this  hour 
there  is  a  friend  at  his  side,  Theseus,  full  of  love  and  friendship, 
full  of  respect  for  the  hero  whom  he  sees  in  the  time  of  weak- 
ness, and  of  gratitude  for  old  memories.  And  if  pain  is  one 
of  the  foundation  facts  of  life,  friendship  is  another — let  us 
remember  that.  So  Euripides  sees  ;  and  the  mood  of  Herakles 
changes — he  will  not  shuffle  out  of  life  : 

But  this  it  was  I  pondered,  though  woe-whelmed — 

"  Take  heed  lest  thou  be  taxed  with  cowardice 

Somehow  in  leaving  thus  the  light  of  day  !  " 

For  whoso  cannot  make  a  stand  against 

These  same  misfortunes,  neither  could  withstand 

A  mere  man's  dart,  oppose  death,  strength  to  strength. 

Therefore  unto  thy  city  I  will  go 

And  have  the  grace  of  thy  ten  thousand  gifts. 

There  !  I  have  tasted  of  ten  thousand  toils 

As  truly — never  waived  a  single  one, 

Nor  let  these  runnings  drop  from  out  my  eyes  ! 

Nor  ever  thought  it  would  have  come  to  this — 

That  I  from  out  my  eyes  do  drop  tears  !     Well ! 

At  present,  as  it  seems,  one  bows  to  fate. 

So  be  it !  ^ 

The  poet  takes  the  same  stand.  Greek  thought  had 
always  its  tinge  of  melancholy,  and  he  does  not  escape — and 
he  does  not  try  to  escape.  He  will  not  blink  the  evil  facts  ; 
he  studies  them  ;  he  is  reproached  with  having  portrayed 
the  pathological  on  the  stage, ^  so  close  does  he  keep  to  the 
evil  fact.  His  standpoint  is  not  the  religious  one  of  Aeschylus 
and   Sophocles — it  is   as  if  he   felt   this  would  mean   some 

^  H.F.  1245  (Browning's  translation). 
^H.F.  1 347-1 35 8  (Browning). 

^  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  did.  Cf.  Frogs,  108 1,  and  the  constant 
taunts  of  Aristophanes. 


156  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

obscuring  of  the  facts,  hope  once  more  darkening  under- 
standing— and  his  reconciliation  must  be  a  deeper  one.  So 
without  the  consolations  of  these  two  great  poets,  he  grapples 
with  pain  and  evil,  and  escapes  no  wound  they  can  deal  him. 
"  A  hidden  harmony  is  better  than  an  obvious,"  said  Heraclitus 
a  century  before,^  and  that  hidden  harmony  Euripides  will 
have.  He  does  not  quite  find  it,  but  there  were  certain  things 
that  made  for  it  which  he  did  find,  and  which  remain. 

If  he  became,  as  he  did,  the  chief  poet  after  Homer  of 
his  race,  it  was  in  some  measure  because  in  him  they  could 
find  a  consolation,  not  elsewhere  to  be  had.  Here  was  a 
man  who  based  himself  on  fact,  and,  unlike  so  many  philoso- 
phers, was  not  steeled  against  pain,  but  deeply  read  in  it — 
what  did  it  mean  for  people  who  growingly  felt  the  pain  of  life  ? 

Wir  heissen  euch  hoffen  ! 

That  Virgil  found  him  so  congenial  is  no  slight  evidence  of 
the  power  of  this  wonderful  spirit.  Every  question  that  men 
ask,  it  has  been  said,  Euripides  raises — doubt,  shame,  pain, 
and  the  whole  gamut — and  yet  he  has  something  to  say. 
And  what  he  had  to  say  shall  end  our  present  study. 

In  the  first  place  we  may  note  again  how  Greece  had 
tasted  the  sense  of  power — trebly,  in  her  victory  over  the 
world,  in  her  great  national  struggle  against  Persia,  and  in 
the  sphere  of  thought ;  and  then  how  another  generation, 
drunk  with  this  same  sense  of  power,  abused  its  power  and 
turned  the  human  spirit's  victory  over  the  material  world  to 
wrong  ends  and  fell  into  materialism  ;  how  freedom  from  Persia 
and  rule  of  the  sea  bred  a  new  temptation,  and  Athens  was  in- 
fected with  the  contagion  of  a  hard  and  selfish  imperialism, 
while  the  teachers  of  thought  became  sophists  and  rhetoricians 
and  trained  the  young  in  the  glib  graces  of  speech  and  rational- 
ism. Against  all  this  decline  the  poet  reacted — he  knew  the 
world  too  deeply  to  think  the  shallow  thoughts  of  the  day. 

Where  men  looked  to  material  success  and  saw  the  value  of 
comfort  and  prosperity,  he  came  forward  boldly  and  asserted 
the  spiritual  basis  of  life.  The  problem  in  Plato's  Republic — 
the  first  problem — is  to  show  that  righteousness  without  reward 
is  enough  and  is  not  made  better  by  reward — that  we  may 

^  Heraclitus,  Frag,  47^(Bywater),  ApiMovit}  dcfiav^s  (f)avepr)s  Kpeiararav. 


EURIPIDES  157 

praise  "  the  thing  itself  "  irrespective  of  reward  of  good  or  ill,  as 
men  judge  such  things.  Euripides  does  not  put  the  matter 
quite  in  the  same  way  ;  a  poet  does  not  exactly  summarize  his 
"  lessons,"  and  if  we  try  to  summarize  them  we  shall  be  sure 
to  miss  some  of  them.  But  the  trend  of  thought  that  is  waked 
by  a  play  is  a  poet's  contribution  to  a  man's  growth.  Here  I 
turn  to  the  play  which  has  most  influenced  me  myself .  I  read 
it,  almost  by  accident,  in  1903,  and  "  discovered  "  it — or,  rather, 
it  discovered  me — found  me  out  and  made  me  ashamed.  I 
had  been  standing  too  near  the  Athenians — the  Athenians  of 
Melos  and  Syracuse,  a.nd  this  play  shown  in  415,  between  Melos 
and  Syracuse,  one  might  say,  came  home  to  me  ;  and  I  knew 
I  was  wrong.     I  have  learnt  other  things  from  it  since. 

There  are  those  who  find  the  Troades  a  characterless  play. 
It  certainly  has  little  plot — a  series  of  episodes,  all  accentuating 
one  thing — the  problem  of  pain.  Troy  is  taken — at  the  end  of 
the  play  we  see  the  flames  shoot  up  and  hear  the  walls  fall. 
Meantime  the  business  in  hand  before  the  Greeks  embark  is 
being  done.  The  captive  women — the  queen  and  princesses 
among  them — are  being  allotted  to  their  new  owners  ;  Polyxena 
is  offered  as  a  sacrifice  at  the  grave  of  Achilles  ;  little  Astyanax 
is  killed.  One  after  another  the  stages  of  this  Via  Dolorosa  are 
reached.  One  figure  stands  out — the  aged  queen  Hecuba.  She 
has  been  lying  in  the  dust,  and  is,  we  may  suppose,  a  woe- 
begone spectacle  enough  ;  she  aches  in  sinew  and  limb  ;  and 
her  heart  is  struck  through  with  grief  after  grief.  Everything 
falls  upon  her  ;  she  bears  the  troubles  of  all  and  she  feels  all.  But 
— and  this  point  is  sometimes  overlooked — miserable  as  she  is 
herself,  the  most  unhappy  of  the  group,  she  is  the  minister  of  hope 
to  the  sad  women  around  her.  A  great  spirit,  and  wonderfully 
tender,  she  is  still  capable  of  great  action.  Forget  Hector,  she 
says  to  Andromache  ;  forget  my  son  (it  is  a  mother  who  speaks). 

Honour  thou 
The  new  lord  that  is  set  above  thee  now 
And  make  of  thine  own  gentle  piety 
A  prize  to  win  his  heart.     So  shalt  thou  be 
A  strength  to  them  that  love  us,  and — God  knows. 
It  may  be — ^rear  this  babe  among  his  foes. 
My  Hector's  child,  to  manhood  and  great  aid 
For  Ilion.  ^ 

1  Troades,  692-698  (Murray's  translation). 


158  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Throughout  she  strives  to  turn  each  sufferer's  thoughts 
away  from  her  own  griefs — to  get  her  to  look  at  others — to 
universahze  her  sorrow  (if  we  may  use  such  a  phrase)  ;  and 
here  she  sets  her  own  motive  before  Andromache — the 
service  of  those  who  love  us — 

€V(f>paveis  (piXovs. 

Contrasted  in  the  play  with  Hecuba — silently  contrasted — 
are  Menelaus  and  Athena — one  of  the  world's  successful  men 
and  a  victorious  goddess.  The  goddess,  as  we  have  seen,  is  in 
a  sense  the  very  negation  of  all  that  a  thoughtful  mind  could 
call  God.  Menelaus  is  simply  successful — a  nothing  crowned 
with  prosperity  and  victory  by  the  aid  of  others.  He  has — and 
Hecuba  is  ;  which  means  most  ?  Which  is  best  ?  Longinus, 
the  finest  of  ancient  critics,  asks  his  reader  whether,  allowing 
that  Homer  blunders  and  ApoUonius  never  slips,  would  you 
rather  be  ApoUonius  or  Homer  ?  ^  Suppose  we  borrow  his 
question,  and  ask,  whether,  allowing  Menelaus  to  have  all  that 
an  ordinary  mind  would  ask  in  the  way  of  success  and  prosperity 
and  Hecuba  to  be  stript  of  everything  that  makes  life  even 
tolerable,  which  would  you  rather  be — Menelaus  or  Hecuba  ? 
The  poet  does  not  ask  this  ;  the  reader  asks  it  of  himself. 
Would  he — could  he — wish  to  be  Menelaus,  to  have  all  that 
heart  could  dream,  and  to  be — Menelaus  ?     Never  !    We  choose 

Hecuba — misery,  slavery,  shame  and  all ;  because Because 

Euripides  is  right ;  the  basis  of  life  is  spiritual,  and,  without 
talking  about  it,  he  has  made  us  feel  it.  Callicles  in  the  Gorgias 
and  the  Cyclops  in  the  play  can  put  the  arguments  on  the  other 
side  ;  but  we  have  felt — and  the  case  is  settled  ;  we  choose  the 
deeper  view.  There  are  problems  still  to  solve — the  why  of 
pain,  and  so  forth — but  instinctively  we  feel  somehow  that  pain 
has  made  the  difference — some  of  the  difference — between 
Hecuba  and  Menelaus  ;  in  any  case  we  know  now  that  there  are 
things  worth  buying  at  the  cost  of  pain.  Here  as  in  other 
instances  Euripides  shows  us  that  life  is  spirit. 

This  was  running  all  against  the  prevailing  currents  of 
thought  in  Athens.  Empire  was  the  word  ;  and  Pericles  and 
Cleon  after  him  had  the  practical  man's  irony  for  the  idealists 
who  felt  things  were  wrong — "  seeking  something  else,  so  to 

^  Longinus,  33,  4. 


EURIPIDES  159 

say,  than  the  terms  on  which  we  Hve."  ^  There  is  no  renoun- 
cing empire,  "  even  if  in  the  panic  of  the  moment  and  through 
slackness  any  of  you  fancies  playing  the  honest  man."  ^  So 
men  are  led  to  vote  that  Mitylenaeans  and  Melians  shall  be 
killed,  and  the  wives  and  children  of  them  sold  into  slavery. 
It  is  a  clear  straight  vote  given  on  intellectual  conviction,  un- 
harassed  by  emotion  or  afterthought  or  imagination ;  the 
Empire  requires  it. 

It  was  in  the  year  after  the  Melian  affair  that  Euripides  put 
the  Troades  on  the  stage.  We  have  seen  how  Hecuba  comforts 
Andromache  with  the  thought  that  her  little  Astyanax  may 
grow  up  and  re-build  Troy.  It  seems  that  the  wise  Odysseus 
was  a  little  ahead  of  her  there  ;  for,  as  she  ceases  to  speak, 
Talthybius  the  herald  enters.  Odysseus  had  addressed  the 
Greeks,  much  as  Cleon  or  Pericles  might  have  ;  did  they  want 
a  third  siege  of  Troy — another  ten  years  of  it  ?  No  !  Then 
what  about  Hector's  son  ?  A  baby  !  yes,  but  he  will  grow 
up  ; — then — but  it  is  horrible  ; — then  are  you  for  "  playing  the 
honest  man "  ?  What  are  the  three  things  that  militate 
against  empire  ?  "  Pity  and  fine  language  and  generosity  to 
the  fallen."  ^  So  the  vote  is  carried,  and  Talthybius  is  sent 
(all  against  his  own  will)  to  fetch  the  baby  and  to  explain  to  his 
mother  that  he  is  to  be  flung  from  the  wall  and  kiUed.  We 
watch  her  as  she  listens,  as  she  speaks  to  her  baby  for  the  last 
time,  and  we  hear  her  as  she  gives  him  up.  Those  who  can 
may  read  the  scene  aloud. 

Things  like  this  we  know  must  be 
In  every  famous  victory. 

"  Teach  your  other  allies  by  a  striking  example."  * 

An  English  critic,  when  the  Troades  was  given  in  London 
in  April  1905,  wrote  :  "  It  is  nothing  to  us  that  a  strong 
party  in  Athens  deplored  the  sacking  of  Melos.  We  cannot 
sympathize  with  the  political  agitations  of  ancient  Athens. 
We  have  no  right  to  apply  the  lessons  of  Euripides  to  our 
own  circumstances."  Have  we  not  ?  Then  let  us  apply 
them  to  Athenian  circumstances. 

1  Cleon,  Thuc.  iii.  38,  7.  2  Pericles,  Thuc.  ii.  6^. 

'  Cleon,  Thuc.  iii.  40.     Cf.  Chapter  III.  p.  74. 
*  Cleon,  Thuc.  iii.  40. 


i6o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Men  were  talking  of  "  the  State,  the  State  " — of  her  great- 
ness and  her  beauty — how  every  man  must  be  her  "  lover  " 
— of  her  empire,  and  her  imperial  destinies.  And  here  rises 
Euripides  and  suggests  the  question  :  "  Suppose,  after  all, 
the  whole  thing,  your  State  and  your  Empire  and  all — is  a 
lie  ?  A  sheer  lie,  however  many  of  you  unite  to  tell  it — a 
contradiction  of  the  deepest  things  and  the  truest  and  the  most 
permanent  in  the  imiverse.  A  story  of  a  day — told  to  win 
you  glory  and  position  and  cheap  food  at  the  cost  of  others  ; 
it  means  the  negation  of  the  truth  of  husband  and  wife,  the 
truth  of  mother  and  child — the  truths  of  life,  the  truths  told 
in  the  tears  and  love  and  pain  that  go  with  every  human 
relation.  A  lie  written  black  across  every  instinct  of  humanity. 
Look  well  to  it ;  you  lie  !  " 

Like  Tolstoy,  and  in  a  minor  degree  Thoreau,  Euripides 
gives  the  eternal  challenge  to  all  our  conventions  of  state  and 
policy  and  national  existence.  God — or,  if  you  like.  Nature — 
the  ultimate  author  of  it  aU — made  fathers  and  mothers  and 
little  children,  and  homes  and  toys,  and  work  and  happiness  ; 
and  you  invent  great  words,  and  for  their  sakes  burn  the 
home,  and  kill  the  father,  sell  the  mother  for  a  slave  and  a 
concubine,  and  dash  the  children  against  the  stones.  "  Oh  ! 
daughter  of  Babylon,  that  art  to  be  destroyed " 

He  asserts  humanity  against  statesmen  and  economists 
and  civil  servants  and  all  who  hold  that  God  made  some 
people  who  do  not  really  matter,  whoever  made  them.  He 
turns  to  woman  and  slave — the  classes  men  despised  and 
made  tools  of — and  he  drew  them  so  that  those  who  would 
see  should  see  that  they  are  human.  Slavery,  polygamy, 
concubinage,  war — all  the  great  accepted  conventions,  and  the 
wonderful  reasons  that  clever  and  rhetorical  people  can  always 
find  for  what  is  wrong — reasons  the  more  wonderful  and  con- 
vincing for  the  wrong,  the  more  obviously  wrong  it  is — 
he  showed  them  for  what  they  are,  things  that  war  against 
the  soul.  He  goes  back  to  Nature  against  all  the  conventions, 
but  not  as  a  sophist ;  to  the  Real  facts,  to  Humanity.  No 
wonder  the  Athenians  gave  the  prize  that  year  to  "  Xenocles, 
whoever  he  may  have  been." 

Lastly,  in  an  age  of  talk  and  rhetoric  and  sophistry,  when 
there  was  a  reason  for  everything  and  as  good  a  reason  against 


EURIPIDES  i6i 

everything,  Euripides  took  refuge  in  the  things  for  which 
no  reasons  are  given.  Men  may  argue  about  right  and  wrong, 
if  they  matter — in  any  case  about  sea-power ;  Euripides 
turned  to  the  sea  itself.  Nobody  argued  about  it,  or  about 
the  green  earth,  the  birds  or  the  trees — he  was  safe  there  ; 
he  could  have  them  to  himself ;  they  did  not  matter.  He 
took  refuge  in  Poetry — no  opiate  to  dull  the  sense  of  life,  but 
life  itself,  grasped  and  realized  to  the  utmost,  known  and  felt. 
In  his  lyrics,  over  and  over  again,  we  escape  with  him  and 
find  ourselves  set  free  from  policies  and  arguments  and  theories 
of  the  state,  among  the  primeval  and  eternal  truths  : 

In  the  elm- woods  and  the  oaken, 
There  where  Orpheus  harped  of  old, 

And  the  trees  awoke  and  knew  him. 
And  the  wild  things  gathered  to  him, 

As  he  sang  amid  the  broken 
Glens  his  music  manifold  ; 
Blessed  Land  of  Pierie  !  ^ 

There  are  birds — the  Comic  poets  have  much  to  say  of  little 
birds  and  their  uses  ;  but  Euripides  does  not  think  of  their 
uses — he  considers  the  birds — the  little  ones  that  nest  in  the 
cliffs  above  his  cave,^  the  greater  birds  that  migrate,  that 
come  with  the  spring  from  the  South  and  go  again  when 
winter  follows. 

On  wings  through  air  would  we  fly,  ' 

As  the  Libyan  birds  in  line, 
Leaving  the  rain  and  the  wintry  sky. 

Follow  the  sign, 
Their  chief's  shrill  note  ;  and  the  wild-bird  train 
For  the  land  of  harvest  that  knows  not  rain. 
Flies,  and  we  hear  the  cry. 
O  long-necked  birds  in  the  night. 
Where  the  clouds  scud  on  as  ye  go. 
Where  the  Pleiads  reach  their  zenith  height 
And  Orion's  fires  glow — 
Tidings  we  bid  you  bring 

To  Eurotas — words  of  joy, 
News,  news  of  their  king — 
He  Cometh,  he  cometh,  their  king. 
Conqueror  home  from  Troy.^ 

1  Bacchae,  560-565  (Murray's  translation). 

2  Cf.  Hippolytus,  732  f.  3  Helena,  1479-1493 

II 


i62  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Such  things  he  studies  ;  he  has  them  to  himself,  "  and 
impulses  of  deeper  birth  have  come  to  him  in  solitude."  The 
simple  natural  things — birds  and  trees,  women  and  children, 
when  men  will  let  them  alone — the  happy,  natural  relations 
— there  is  peace  in  these  things.  But  still  there  is  the  world 
of  men,  and  his  lyrics  lead  us  back  to  it.  Can  we  take  our 
new-found  peace  back  with  us  ? 

In  Salamis,  filled  with  the  foaming 

Of  billows  and  murmur  of  bees, 
Old  Telamon  stayed  from  his  roaming, 
Long  ago,  on  a  throne  of  the  seas  ; 
Looking  out  on  the  hUls  olive-laden, 

Enchanted  where  first  from  the  earth 
The  grey-gleaming  fruit  of  the  Maiden 

Athena  had  birth  ; 
A  soft  grey  crown  for  a  city 
Beloved,  a  City  of  Light : 
Yet  he  rested  not  there,  nor  had  pity, 

But  went  forth  in  his  might, 
Where  Heracles  wandered,  the  lonely 

Bow-bearer,  and  lent  him  his  hands 
For  the  wrecking  of  one  land  only, 
Of  Ilion,  Ilion  only. 

Most  hated  of  lands  !  ^ 

Once  more  joy  and  pain — the  twin  roots  of  Poetry — the 
twofold  training  of  man — two  sides  to  the  one  avenue  to  Truth. 
Euripides  has  not  told  us  all  there  is  to  know  nor  solved  all 
the  problems ;  but  he  has  felt  them,  and  he  knows  the  path 
to  knowledge.  There  are  other  poets — poets  of  Greece  and 
of  our  own  lands — but  not  many  who  have  read  so  clearly 
our  trouble  or  grasped  so  well  the  value  of  Joy  and  Pain. 
^  Troades,  794-806  (Murray's  translation). 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON 

ONE  day,  we  are  told — it  would  be  somewhere  about  the 
middle  of  the  Peloponnesian  War — Socrates  met  in  a 
narrow  lane  a  lad  of  the  upper  classes,  a  lad  of  spirit 
and  pleasant  appearance.  He  put  up  his  staff,  and,  blocking 
the  way  so,  he  asked  the  lad  where  one  commodity  and  another 
was  to  be  had.  The  boy  told  him,  and  then  came  a  harder 
question  :  Where  do  men  become  kaloi  kdgathoi  ?  When  the 
boy  said  he  did  not  know,  "  Then  come  with  me  and  learn," 
said  the  old  man.  "  And  after  that,"  concludes  the  story, 
"  he  was  a  pupil  of  Socrates."  ^ 

The  question  is  in  a  way  the  sign  of  a  new  age.  The 
phrase  employed  was  on  the  whole  a  new  one,  for  though 
Thucydides  has  it  twice,  he  brings  out  that  it  is  a  colloquialism. ^ 
But  the  colloquialism  had  a  future,  cant  term  as  it  was.  Liter- 
ally it  meant  "  beautiful  and  good  "  ;  ^  but  the  Greeks,  like 
other  people,  used  moral  terms  in  a  social  and  political  sense, 
and  it  came  to  mean  something  very  like  "  gentleman,"  though 
perhaps  with  the  implication  of  a  little  more  culture  than  our 
word  carries.  What  was  the  education  of  a  gentleman  ? 
Where  and  how  were  gentlemen  made  ? 

A  change  had  come  over  Athens — slowly,  but  at  last  per- 
ceptibly. The  intellectual  upheaval  of  the  age  of  Pericles  was 
not  to  be  undone.  Still  "  that  native  Attic  trick  is  blooming, 
that  *  What  do  you  really  mean  ?  '  "  ^  There  is  still  the  scrutiny 
of  inherited  belief  with  all  its  unsettling  effects.     "  Do  you 

^  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  2,  §48,  alSrificov  koI  evetdeararos  els  vnep^oXrjv. 

2  Thuc.  iv.  40,  2  ;  viii.  48,  6.  Also  Herodotus,  ii.  143  ;  see  Chapter  I. 
p.  25. 

3  See  below,  p.  172. 

*  Aristophanes,  Clouds,  II73,  rovro  roiinx^ptov  drep^i/ws  iTravOet,  to  Vi 
Xeycts  av'. 

163 


i64  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

not  remark,  I  said,  how  great  is  the  evil  that  dialectic  has 
introduced  ?  What  evil  ?  he  said.  The  students  of  the  art 
are  filled  with  lawlessness.  .  .  .  When  the  questioning  spirit 
asks  what  is  fair  or  honourable,  and  the  man  answers  as  the 
legislator  has  taught  him,  and  then  arguments  many  and 
diverse  refute  his  words,  until  he  is  driven  into  believing  that 
nothing  is  honourable  any  more  than  dishonourable,  or  just 
and  good  any  more  than  the  reverse,  and  so  of  all  the  notions 
which  he  most  valued,  do  you  think  that  he  will  still  honour 
and  obey  them  as  before  ?  "  ^  There  is  a  danger,  Plato  says — 
and  he  had  been  proved  right — in  young  men  getting  too  early 
the  taste  for  dialectic.     Some  one  asks  in  a  play  of  Euripides : 

a  thought  best  rendered  perhaps  in  Hamlet's  sentence : 
"  There's  nothing  good  or  bad  but  our  thinking  makes  it  so." 
It  raises — and  half  suggests  an  answer  to — the  great  question 
of  the  relations  between  convention,  law,  tradition — all  those 
inherited  forms  of  belief  and  practice  grouped  under  the 
conception  of  Nomos — and  the  greater  conception  of  Nature. 
Once  such  a  question  has  been  raised,  it  must  be  settled — not 
with  a  half-answer  but  decisively.  Meanwhile  every  man,  it 
seemed,  could  think  as  he  pleased  and  decide  for  himself,  for 
there  was  no  other  standard  than  himself — ^he  was  the  measure 
of  all  things.^  Right  and  wrong  were  just  what  you  made 
them,  just  what  you  wanted — so  the  Melians  found,  so  Callicles 
insisted — there  was  nothing  else  in  practice  or  theory.  But 
was  there  not  ? 

It  might  be  convenient  for  the  democracy  to  use  this 
theory  in  international  relations,  but  it  was  another  thing  at 
home.  It  bred  a  new  t57pe  of  man,  and  not  a  type  that  a 
democracy  needs.  Tyrants  Greek  states  had  known  of  old — 
men  who  frankly  aimed  at  self-aggrandizement  and  achieved 
it ;  but  there  had  never  been  any  moral  sanction  for  their 
act.  The  new  type  seemed  to  have  a  sanction — the  sanction 
of  intellect.  So  the  new  education  came  to  this — that  the 
trained  intellect  was  discharged  of  all  duty  to  the  State  ;  it 
was  anti-democratic  beyond  anything  the  world  had  yet  seen  ; 

1  Plato,  Rep.  537E,  538D,  539B  (Jowett's  translation). 

2  The  view  of  Protagoras  set  forth  in  Plato,  Theaet.  152A. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  165 

it  abolished  society.  And  yet  there  was  no  way  of  going  back. 
Thought  had  been  set  in  motion,  and  till  it  was  satisfied  with 
reason  it  could  not  be  stilled.  When  the  issue  is  to  know  or 
not  to  know,  youth  at  least  will  insist  on  knowing,  at  whatever 
cost ;   and  in  that  resolve  lies  the  hope  of  the  future. 

In  the  meantime,  there  were  signs  of  reaction.  The  quick 
turns  of  self-applauding  intellects  did  not  exhaust  all  there 
was  to  be  known — perhaps  they  were  too  quick.  The  trick  of 
the  conjurer  does  not  alter  the  laws  of  nature,  the  conditions 
under  which  we  live  ;  however  brilliant  he  is  at  sleight  of  hand, 
he  does  not  alter  anything  that  is  fundamental,  whether  he 
makes  our  shillings  vanish  or  our  sense  of  right  and  wrong. 
The  period  with  which  we  have  now  to  deal  shows  at  once  the 
full  effects  of  the  sophistic  movement  at  its  zenith,  and  then  it 
is  past  its  zenith.  The  new  generation  shows  the  outcome  of 
the  new  enlightenment  and  of  that  deeper  questioning,  which 
sought  either  by  quiet  sense  or  reasoned  endeavour  to  find 
a  permanent  foundation  for  life.  Euripides  represents  the  age, 
but  he  was  already  an  old  man,  and  while  Athens  never  let 
go  what  he  had  given  her,  the  generation  that  grew  up  in  his 
last  twenty  years  strikes  a  different  note  in  literature.  He 
taught  them  to  feel ;  and  in  the  feelings  which  he  taught  them 
to  recognize  they  began  to  surmise  there  was  solution  for  the 
questions  he  asked — they  move  to  the  view  that  human  life 
matters  somehow,  that  force  and  individual  cleverness  are 
not  all,  that  elusive  as  it  is  there  is  reason  in  all  human 
relations. 

In  this  period  ideas  are  struck  out  in  education  which  long 
held  sway  in  the  ancient  world,  and  which  hold  sway  still. 
There  is  a  beginning  made,  hesitantly  it  is  true,  of  scientific 
research  or  at  least  inquiry.  Culture  becomes  a  deliberate 
ideal.  Philosophy  reaches  a  new  plane  altogether.  And  in 
the  meantime  everybody  was  free  to  educate  his  son  as  he 
pleased.^ 

Mathematics  and  Astronomy  were  beginning  to  claim  atten- 
tion, but  there  was  disagreement  as  to  their  value.  Aris- 
tophanes made  great  game  of  them — Socrates  hoisted  high  to 

1  Plato,  Alcih.  i.  122B,  ovhev\  fxeXei.  Cf.  Aristotle,  Ethics,  x.  9,  13, 
p.  1 1 80a  ;  in  most  cities  no  system,  but  every  man,  like  the  Cyclops, 
is  lawgiver  for  his  children  and  his  wife. 


i66  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

tread  the  air  and  look  down  on  the  sun/  mingling  his  subtle 
thought  with  the  kindred  air,  and  Meton  coming  with  rods 
to  land-surv^ey  the  air  for  the  birds,  and  mete  it  out  by  acres,^ 
are  figures  of  comedy,  even  if  they  have  an  element  of  history. 
For,  though  it  has  been  recently  suggested  that  perhaps  at 
the  time  of  the  production  of  the  Clouds  Socrates  had  an  interest 
in  Physics  which  he  afterwards  lost,  it  is  generally  agreed  on 
the  evidence  of  Plato  and  Xenophon  that  he  did  not  care  for 
Astronomy  and  kindred  studies.  When  he  was  young, 
Socrates  says  in  the  Phaedo,^  he  had  a  great  passion  for  such 
subjects,  and  he  read  the  books  of  Anaxagoras  with  enthusiasm, 
till  he  found  that  the  writer  made  no  use  of  Mind  at  all,  and 
that  his  causes  after  all  were  air  and  aether  and  water — that 
he  confused  cause  with  means.  Xenophon,  always  anxious 
to  prove  his  teacher  practical,  says  that  Socrates  emphasized 
the  value  of  Astronomy  so  far  as  it  bore  on  navigation,  but 
that  he  deprecated  worry  about  the  distances  and  periods  of 
the  stars.*  Plutarch  shows  us,  in  the  story  of  Nicias'  failure 
in  Sicily,  how  disastrous  the  popular  suspicion  of  scientific 
Astronomy  could  be  ;  for  it  was  Anaxagoras,  he  says,  who 
first,  with  more  clearness  and  courage  than  any  other  man, 
wrote  an  explanation  of  lunar  eclipses,  but  it  was  a  secret  book 
only  circulated  among  friends,  and  Nicias  was  at  the  mercy  of 
an  ignorant  soothsayer.  ^  Geometry  Socrates  tolerated  to  the 
extent  to  which  it  could  be  used  in  land-surveying. 

Grammar  and  Rhetoric  were  subjects  against  which  there 
could  be  no  theological  suspicion,  and  while  the  former  could 
be  criticized  as  dealing  in  words  not  things,  and  the  latter  as 
tending  to  dishonesty,  both  gained  a  permanent  place  in  Greek 
education,  which  in  course  of  time  became  a  predominant 
place.  Their  great  champion  in  the  fourth  century  was  Isocrates, 
who  was  at  this  very  time  receiving  that  careful  education, 
which  (he  tells  us)  his  father  gave  him,  and  winning  more 
distinction  among  his  fellow-students  than  he  had,  if  we  could 
believe  him,  later  on  among  his  fellow-citizens.^  He  thought 
indeed  that  Geometry  and  Astronomy  had  their  value  up  to 
a  certain  point — like  Dialectic — for  they  kept  the  young  out 
of  mischief  and  were  in  measure  a  useful  sort  of  training,  but 

1  Clouds,  225.  2  Birds,  995.  ^  Phaedo,  96A  ff. 

*  Mem.  iv,  7,  4-6.     ^  Plut.  Nicias,  23,  2-4.     « Isocrates,  Antid.  161. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  167 

not  a  real  preparation  for  life.^  Real  culture  he  defined  as  a 
union  of  savoir-faire,  gaiety,  and  moderation,  with  mastery  of 
pleasure  and  misfortune,  and  the  ability  to  carry  success  ^ — 
a  definition  much  like  Horace's. 

Far  more  significant,  however,  was  the  education  which 
the  young  Athenian  got  without  noticing  it.  Long  ago 
Simonides  had  written,  7roA,t<?  avBpa  SLBdaKet  —  the  city 
teacheth  a  man — a  sentence  of  more  meanings  than  one.^ 
Athens  was  an  education  for  Greece,  Pericles  said.^  Plato 
later  on  insisted  that  it  is  the  Many  themselves  that  are  the 
real  sophists — the  so-called  sophists  only  give  back  to  the 
Many  their  own  original  opinions.^  The  epheheia  of  later  days, 
a  system  of  state  training  and  drilling  for  youths  from  eighteen 
to  twenty,  did  not  yet  exist,  it  would  seem  ;  ®  so  they  could 
begin  to  join  in  national  life  at  once  as  men.  Indeed  they 
began  still  earlier,  and  were  taken  by  their  fathers  to  the  law- 
courts  and  the  theatres.'  Aristophanes  produced  his  first 
play — or  got  another  to  produce  it  for  him — when  he  was 
about  twenty-three  ;  and  some  years  before  he  was  thirty,  he 
wrote  his  brilliant  comedy  on  modern  education,  the  Clouds, 
in  which,  "  quite  unconscious  of  the  debt  he  owes  to  the 
conditions  he  derides,  he  sets  his  face  stubbornly  toward  the 
past."  ^     Twenty  years  later  he  flouts  the  stripling  boys — 

Tragedians  by  the  myriad,  who  can  chatter 
A  furlong  faster  than  Euripides — 

whole  choirs  of  swallows,  who  as  a  rule  are  only  capable  of 
one  tragedy  each  ^ — though  he  is  not  as  grateful  for  this  as 
he  might  be.  The  Athenian  drama,  with  its  inspiration  and 
its  wonder,  was  no  small  factor  in  education.  Politics,  we 
know,  were  talked  incessantly  and  everywhere  in  Athens, 
and  elections  were  annual,  and  impeachment  scarcely  less 
oftem     The  small  houses  and  the  warm  dry  climate  made  life 

1  Isocrates,  Panath.  26-28 — '-  up  to  a  certain  point  "  ;  so  Callicles 
too  held  about  Philosophy  [Gorg.  484c) ;  so  the  natural  Englishman 
about  most  things,  according  to  Walter  Bagehot. 

2  Isocrates,  Panath.  30,  31. 

3  Simonides,  Frag.  67  (109),  in  Plut.  an  sent  resp.  c.  i. 

*  Thuc.  ii.  41,  I.  5  Plato,  Rep.  492 A. 

«  See  A.  A.  Bryant's  delightful  study  of  Boyhood  in  Athens  in 
Harvard  Studies  in  Classical  Philology,  xviii.  pp.  79-88. 

^  Ihid.  p.  98.  8  iijid.  p.  93.  »  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  89. 


i68  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

in  the  open  air  the  inevitable  thing — for  men  at  least.  So  that 
without  going  outside  the  streets  of  a  not  very  large  town,  and 
with  the  aid  of  occasional  days  at  the  Peiraieus,  an  Athenian 
boy  picked  up  unconsciously  a  good  deal  of  political  and 
literary  culture.  What  he  learnt  at  the  play  was  reinforced 
by  music  lessons  ^  and  a  good  deal  more  dancing  than  we 
might  have  expected.  All  these  things  go,  as  Socrates  ironic- 
ally says,  to  show  how  much  the  moderns  excel  the  ancients 
in  wisdom.^ 

Side  by  side  with  intellectual  training  something  must  be 
said  of  athletics.  In  the  fifth  century  they  had  at  once  risen 
and  declined  in  importance.  Mr.  Kenneth  Freeman  remarked 
that  the  preference  given  to  conversation  over  exercise  was  a 
feature  of  the  age.^  The  reason  was  that  athletics  had  become 
too  specialized  and  therefore  too  important  for  amateurs. 
When  Socrates,  in  Xenophon's  Symposium,  proposes  to  take 
dancing  lessons,  it  is  not,  like  long-distance  runners,  to  have 
stout  legs  and  thin  shoulders,  or  like  boxers,  to  have  stout 
shoulders  and  thin  legs,  but  to  be  evenly  developed.*  The 
athlete  was  trained  for  his  particular  event  with  the  passion 
and  the  consecration  of  a  religion.  To  "  eat  like  a  wrestler  " 
was  a  proverb.  5  The  habit  of  body  of  Greek  rthletes  was, 
according  to  Plato,  rather  a  sleepy  sort  of  thing  and  danger- 
ous to  health ;  they  slept  away  their  lives  and  were  liable  to 
serious  illnesses  from  slight  departures  from  their  regimen.  ^ 
In  particular  Plato  derides  a  certain  Herodicus  of  Selymbria, 

^  Generally  the  lyre.  Alcibiades  refused  altogether  to  learn  to 
play  the  flute  (Plut.  Alcih.  2). 

2  Plato,  Hippias  Major,  p.  28  3 A. 

^  Schools  of  Hellas.  A  digression  may  be  forgiven  in  a  note.  I 
am  struck  with  the  fact,  which  older  men  emphasize,  of  how  very 
modern  is  the  present-day  systematization  of  athletics  in  the  Uni- 
versities. Forty  years  ago,  or  fifty,  men  walked  in  the  afternoons — 
walked  a  great  deal,  saw  the  country  round  Cambridge — and  talked  as 
they  went,  and  their  talk  was  discussion.  I  am  also  told  by  those,  who 
remember  those  days,  what  education  there  was  in  it ;  and  I  can 
believe  them.  At  any  rate  they  had  Socrates  on  their  side,  and  in  fact 
all  Greek  thinkers  of  note  down  to  Porphyry.  Porphyry  grouped 
athletes  with  the  stupid ,  classes,  including,  alas  !  soldiers  and  business 
men. 

*  Symp.  2,  17.  ^  Aristophanes,  Peace,  ^t,,  (oawep  "^oKaurrfis. 

®  Plato,  Rep.  iii.  404A. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  169 

who  had  a  "  system  "  of  his  own  for  training — he  mixed 
m.edicine  and  gymnastic,  and  tortured  first  himself  and  then 
the  rest  of  the  world  by  the  invention  of  lingering  death. ^ 
Ordinary  people  could  not  contend  with  professionals,  and  let 
athletics  alone,  except  as  spectators. 

The  fact  was,  there  was  a  considerable  shifting  of  interest. 
Xenophanes  long  ago  had  said  that  athletics  were  overdone — 
a  view  which  drew  on  him  the  censure  of  Sir  Richard  Jebb, 
who  as  a  good  conservative  Member  of  Parliament  compared 
him  with  modern  faddists.  This  even  faddists  might  forgive 
to  an  enthusiast  for  Pindar  ;  but  the  sober  mind  of  Greece 
moved  to  the  opinion  of  Xenophanes ;  and  life  and  politics 
and  literature  and  philosophy  grew  so  absorbing  that  athletes 
and  athletics  yielded  place  to  nobler  interests.  Pericles 
made  the  Athenians  talkers,  said  Socrates  to  tease  Callicles.^ 
That  was  inevitable.  A  man  who  manages  a  big  departmental 
store  has  to  do  more  talking  than  his  father  did  who  was  a 
small  farmer.  Commerce  and  the  control  of  a  great  empire 
involve  speech  and  plenty  of  it ;  and  the  Athenians  enjoyed 
it.  The  gloomy  Athenian  Oligarch,  writing  in  424,  says  the 
Demos  has  done  away  with  those  who  practise  gymnastic  or 
music  here. 3  None  the  less  the  great  athletes  were  popular 
heroes — to  see  if  not  to  imitate ;  and  significance  attached  to 
the  great  Games,  as  the  fame  of  the  Spartan  Lichas  and  the 
extraordinary  outfit  of  chariots  by  Alcibiades  prove. 

It  may  be,  as  some  hold,  that  the  reaction  against  athletics 
went  too  far — at  least,  athletics  considered  as  training.  In 
his  Clouds  Aristophanes,  aged  seven-and-twenty,  like  a  healthy 
undergraduate  emphasizes  the  importance  of  the  old  training 
and  the  general  weedy,  sappy,  dirty  look  of  Socrates'  hangers- 
on  in  the  Thinking-Shop — like  the  Laconian  prisoners  from 
Pylos  ; — they  were  not  allowed  to  be  in  the  open  air  very  much, 
it  is  explained.*  The  Just  Argument,  appearing  in  person 
on  the  stage,  tells  of  the  old  days  when  modesty  was  in  fashion, 
when  boys  held  their  tongues  and  went  to  school, — and  learnt 

*  Rep.  iii.  406A. 

2  Plato,  Gorg.  5 1 5E.  The  irony  of  this  is  splendid  ;  some  people 
fancied  it  was  Socrates  who  had  taught  people  to  chatter  ;  there  was 
a  play  of  Aristophanes  about  it. 

^  Oligarch's  Ath.  Rep.  i,  13.         *  Aristophanes,  Clouds,  186,  198. 


170  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  real  old  music  there,  not  the  "  turn,  trill,  tweedle- trash  " 
of  to-day, — when  they  knew  good  manners  and  practised  them 
at  home,  and  went  to  the  gymnasia  and  grew  ruddy  of  cheek 
and  sound  of  limb,  broad-shouldered,  strong,  silent  men — 
instead  of  the  narrow-chested,  thief-faced,  swindling  jargoners 
bred  nowadays  by  Socrates  and  his  like.  This,  of  course,  was 
one  of  the  crimes  of  Socrates  for  the  poet. 

The  friends  of  Socrates  told  another  tale,  for  Xenophon  sets 
forth  a  conversation  he  had  with  a  youth  in  bad  condition, 
who  excused  himself  on  the  ground  that  he  was  just  an  lSicoT7]<i, 
not  a  professional,  and  the  sage  warned  him  at  once  of  the 
risks  for  himself  and  the  State  in  case  of  war,  and,  in  any  case, 
of  the  mental  and  moral  consequences  of  a  neglected  body — 
"  even  where  the  use  of  the  body  might  seem  slightest — in 
thinking,  who  does  not  know  that  many  come  to  great  grief 
for  want  of  bodily  health  ?  "  ^  The  old  man  himself,  like  Dr. 
Johnson  in  this  as  in  much  else,  was  a  model, of  sound  con- 
dition and  muscular  strength  and  endurance.  /  Bodily  training 
was  one  thing,  athletic  eminence  another.  The  athlete  was 
useless  as  a  soldier — he  was  not  adaptable,  either  for  the 
variety  of  duty  or  of  diet  that  a  military  campaign  made 
necessary.  Some  generations  later  the  State  undertook  the 
task  of  giving  and  enforcing  the  training  thought  desirable, 
but  in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  in  the  war-time  that  followed 
his  death  men  were  left  to  bring  up  their  sons  as  they  pleased, 
or  as  their  sons  pleased. 

It  is  of  interest  perhaps  to  note  in  passing  how  with  scarcely 
a  break  in  its  history  the  general  scheme  of  Athenian  education 
has  come  down  to  our  own  day.  The  half -rhetorical,  half- 
literary  training  which  Isocrates  gave,  and  which  he  valued 
so  highly,  became  the  standard  of  Greek  culture.  Centuries 
after  Christ  we  find  Greeks  all  over  their  half  of  the  Roman 
Empire  with  hardly  another  ideal.  The  Romans  themselves 
adopted  it ;  it  lived  through  the  Middle  Ages  and  received 
new  life  at  the  Renaissance  ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  last  fifty 
years  that  Science — not  precisely  the  sciences  so  much  debated 
by  Socrates  and  his  contemporaries — gained  a  real  foothold 
in  general  education.     Isocrates  was  essentially  a  shallow  and 

^  Mem.  iii.  12,  1-8.     See  the  whole  chapter.     Even  if  the  voice  is 
the  voice  of  Xenophon,  it  is  significant  as  evidence. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  171 

thin  nature,  and  it  is  easy  to  understand  the  modem  reaction 
against  his  conceptions  of  culture  ;  but  we  may  yet  have  to 
own  that  Socrates'  preference  of  men  over  stars  and  triangles 
may  cut  deeper  than  we  have  thought,  and  to  admit  sorrow- 
fully that  we  have  given  Natural  Science  too  large  a  place  in 
our  scheme  of  education — that  it  does  not  educate  the  young 
quite  so  much  as  we  thought  it  would  with  its  emphasis  on 
observation  and  its  close  reasoning,  perhaps  because  after  all 
the  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man.  "  Forgive  me,  my  dear 
sir,"  said  Socrates,  "  but  I  am  so  fond  of  learning.  And  fields, 
you  know,  and  trees  refuse  to  teach  me  anything,  but  men  in 
the  city  will."^  It  is  a  shocking  sentiment,  which  loyalty  to 
Wordsworth  bids  us  reject  at  once,  and  we  do  reject  it ; — and 
yet,  one-sided  as  it  is,  it  is  true  too. 

We  left  Socrates  with  the  lad  in  the  lane,  face  to  face  with 
the  difficult  question  of  how,  or  where,  a  gentleman  could  be 
trained  ;   and  we  must  return  to  them.     The  story,  of  course, 
may  be  a  mere  legend  or  even  a  pure  invention,  like  Washington 
and  the  hatchet ;  but  it  is  perhaps  just  as  likely  to  be  true  as 
false.    The  boy  was  Xenophon,  the  son  of  Gryllos ;  and,  whether 
or  not  his  acquaintance  with  Socrates  began  in  this  charming 
way,  he  was  a  friend  of  Socrates  ;  the  ideal  of  the  kalos  kdgathos 
was  what  Gryllos  clearly  set  before  his  son,  and  Xenophon 
himself,  a  generation  later,  set  it  before  his  twin  boys  in  the 
country  home  at  Scillus.     There  are  one  or  two  other  anecdotes 
of  Xenophon's  youth,  of  less  historical  value.     We  are  told  that 
Socrates  saved  his  life  at  the  battle  of  Delium,^  but  this  involves 
so  many  chronological  difficulties,  and  there  is  so  easy  an  ex- 
planation in  a  confusion  of  tradition,  that  the  tale  is  rejected. 
The  battle  was  in  424.     The  dates  of  Xenophon's  life  point  to 
431,  or  some  year  very  near  it,  as  the  year  of  his  birth.     It  is 
also  said — and  M.  Croiset  believes  it  is  likely  to  be  true — that 
Xenophon  was  for  a  while  a  prisoner  of  war  in  Thebes.^     He 
certainly  describes  Proxenos  the  Theban  as  a  friend  of  old  days, 
when  he  joined  him  in  Cyrus'  army  ;   and  he  as  certainly  dis- 
liked Thebes  and  Thebans,  and  the  absence  of  Epameinondas 
from  his  pages  is  very  conspicuous.     Philip  of  Macedon,  it  is 

1  Plato,  Phaed.  230D.  « 

2  Strabo,  c.  403.     Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  5,  7,  §  22. 

3  Philostratus  is  the  authority  ;   Croiset,  Xenophon,  p.  16. 


172  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

said,  owed  some  of  his  hatred  of  Thebes  to  his  residence  there 
as  a  hostage.  But  there  were  many  reasons  why  Xenophon 
and  other  people  should  dislike  Thebes  quite  apart  from  any 
captivity  there  .^  If  he  was  at  Thebes,  it  is  suggested  that 
he  may  have  met  there  Prodicos  of  Ceos,  whom  he  has  im- 
mortalized by  making  Socrates  quote  his  Choice  of  Herakles.^ 

But  after  all  Athens  was  the  home  of  Xenophon's  boyhood, 
and  there  he  grew  up.  It  might  be  said  that  he  is  not  altogether 
a  typical  Athenian — he  is  quieter  a  great  deal  than  the  Athenian 
we  are  taught  to  see  in  Comedy  or  in  the  speeches  of  the  orators, 
and  he  is  not  the  ideal  citizen  sketched  by  Pericles  in  the  Funeral 
Speech — not  so  amazingly  alert  and  electric.  He  belongs  to 
another  social  group — quiet,  thoughtful,  sound,  and  conservative ; 
and  in  the  end,  like  other  greater  men,  he  has  seen  so  much  of 
the  world,  Hellenic  and  non-Hellenic,  that  Athens  is  no  longer 
all  the  world  to  him,  and  conservative  as  he  is,  he  is  already 
reaching  out  to  a  new  Greek  world  altogether.  But  he  begins 
as  an  Athenian  kalos  kdgathos. 

"  Beautiful  and  good  " — each  of  the  words  had  a  variety 
of  suggestion — physical  ^  and  moral  beauty,  the  sense  of  honour, 
good  birth,  good  connexions,  sound  thinking,  sound  character 
— and  the  combined  phrase  came  to  have  a  political  mean- 
ing, like  gentleman  and  noble  in  English.  The  allies,  says 
Phrynichos,  in  Thucydides'  Eighth  Book,  will  want  to  be  free 
from  Athens  altogether — they  will  not  care  about  "  the  so-called 
kaloi  kdgathoi ;  they  will  say  they  are  the  persons  who  sug- 
gested crimes  to  the  popular  mind,  who  provided  the  means 
for  their  execution,  and  who  reaped  the  fruits  themselves."  ^ 
Jowett  translates  the  phrase  "  the  so-called  nobility,"  Crawley 
"  the  so-called  better  classes."  Yet  when  Xenophon  describes 
Ischomachus  in  one  of  his  later  books,  he  makes  Socrates  say 
that  Ischomachus  was  one  of  those  who  are  justly  entitled  to 
"  that  great  name  {to  aefivov  ovojua)  kalos  kdgathos  "  ^ — 

The  grand  old  name  of  gentleman — 

^  Cf.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  19,  ^  Mem.  ii.  i,  21-34. 

^  Socrates,  in  the  Oecon.  6,  16,  says  physical  beauty  is  not  all  that 
is  involved  ;  people  of  physical  beauty  he  often  found  to  be  knaves 
in  their  soul. 

*  Thuc.  viii.  48,  6.  ^  Xen.  Oecon.  ch.  6,  12,  14  ;  and  ch.  7. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  173 

and  the  picture  he  draws  is  that  of  a  man  indeed  worthy  of  the 
name,  even  if  he  does  lean  a  little  to  the  heavier  implication  of 
the  term  (yefivo^}  Xenophon  came  of  this  class — that  is  clear 
on  every  page  he  writes  ;  and  long  before  Socrates  asked  him 
the  question,  the  matter  of  the  education  proper  for  a  kalos 
kdgathos  had  been  in  the  mind  of  his  father. 

The  whole  family  atmosphere  was  clearly  conservative — 
ideas,  traditions,  friendships,  associations.  "  The  city  teaches 
the  man  " — but  at  home,  it  would  seem,  there  was  another 
influence.  We  have  only  to  think  of  Thucydides  and  Euripides 
in  connexion  with  Xenophon  to  feel  how  far  away  he  stands 
from  their  outlook  on  life.  Of  course  he  has  not  at  all  so  strong 
and  original  an  intellect  as  either  of  them,  but  quite  apart  from 
that  he  approaches  life  from  another  angle.  For  instance, 
compare  the  attitude  of  Thucydides  to  religion — the  contrast 
that  Euripides  suggests  would  be  too  violent.  Thucydides 
lays  stress,  as  we  have  seen,  on  a  powerful  natural  endowment, 
natural  force  {^vcreco^  tc^i^?) ;  ^  Xenophon,  of  course,  knows  the 
forceful  character  when  he  meets  him,  but  in  all  his  books  he 
makes  it  clear  that  a  man's  position  is  stronger  and  his  head 
clearer,  if  he  will  use  such  means  as  he  can  to  supplement  him- 
self with  the  knowledge  of  what  the  gods'  will  is  and  to  secure 
their  support  and  inspiration.^  He  sacrifices  perpetually,  he 
consults  the  oracle,  he  has  a  mantis  at  his  side,  he  watches  for 
omens — all  this,  though  the  most  practical  and  business-like 
of  men.  He  will  "  keep  his  powder  dry  " — that  runs  through 
the  Anabasis — ^but  he  thinks  it  worth  while  to  "  trust  God." 
Thucydides  would  have  given  both  "  God  "  and  "  trust  "  a  very 
different  meaning,  if  he  had  been  asked  to  use  the  expression. 
The  detachment  of  Thucydides  in  recording  men's  use  of  oracle, 
temple,  festival,  and  the  like,  and  their  violation  of  such  things, 
is  notorious,  Xenophon  was  frankly  shocked,  and  owns  it, 
at  the  butchery  in  Corinth — on  a  feast  day — at  altars — before 
the  images  of  the  gods — the  men  who  did  it  were  "  most  im- 

1  See  the  dialogue  of  Hippolytus  with  the  huntsman  (who  brings 
out  this  sense  of  aefivos)  in  Euripides'  Hippolytus. 

2  See  Bruns,  Lit.  Party  at,  p.  412,  on  this  controversy  as  to  force  of 
natural  endowment,  and  the  remark  of  Socrates  on  the  question  of 
Themistocles'  natural  gifts,  Mem.  iv.  2,  2. 

8  On  this  whole  matter  (see  Mem.  i.  4),  a  chapter,  where,  if  Socrates 
is  the  speaker,  he  carries  his  pupil  with  him. 


174  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

pious,"  "  utterly  without  law  in  their  thoughts,"  it  was  "pro- 
fanation." ^  Grote  remarks  that  the  Argives  would  be  com- 
paratively unimpressed  by  solemnities  peculiar  to  Corinth  ; 
Xenophon  feels  that  they  should  have  been  impressed.  Eduard 
Meyer  says  downright  that  the  restoration  (in  404)  aimed  at 
calling  fear  of  God  and  pious  custom  back  to  life,  but  that 
instead  of  the  old  naive  piety  there  came  a  formalist  religiosity, 
which  Xenophon  shows  us,  Xenophon  the  typical  representa- 
tive of  the  reaction  in  literature.^  The  criticism  seems  coloured 
by  some  suggestion  of  memories  of  the  reaction  in  Europe  after 
the  French  Revolution — the  artificial  and  unholy  piety  of  the 
pupils  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  Holy  Alliance.  A  good  deal 
depends  on  outlook.  Dr.  Johnson's  acts  of  devotion  seemed 
absurd  to  Horace  Walpole  and  superstitious  to  William  Cowper  ; 
yet  they  were  honest  conviction  and  lifelong.  It  is  surely 
fairer  criticism  to  suggest  that  Xenophon  represents  not  a 
reaction  but  an  outlook  and  an  attitude  that  had  never  passed 
away.  None  the  less,  it  all  strikes  a  reader  oddly  who  comes 
upon  it  after  studying  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  and  recalls 
that  Herodotus  was  dead  before  Xenophon  was  bom.  After  all, 
the  conservative  mind  is  a  problem  we  still  have  with  us. 
Xenophon  is  a  natural  conservative,  by  instinct  and  training, 
but  a  true  one  with  no  archaizing  fancies,  no  make-believe,  and 
no  self-conscious  cult  of  reaction.  So  much  is  obvious,  and 
it  surely  makes  it  certain  that  he  is  not  acting  a  part  in  his 
religion,  either  to  impress  us  or  to  amuse  or  cheat  himself. 

He  believes  in  the  gods,  in  Providence,  in  divine  care  for 
men  ;  and  he  quotes — or  represents — Socrates  as  maintaining 
that  the  unwritten  laws  everjrwhere  observed  are  not  of 
man's  contrivance  but  of  the  gods'  making.^  That  is  clearly 
Xenophon's  own  view,  by  the  time  he  had  seen  a  good  deal 
of  human  life  in  and  out  of  the  Greek  world ;  and  it  would 
seem  to  go  back,  too,  to  his  early  days.  The  great  political 
ideal  of  kaloi  kdgathoi  for  the  nation  was  what  they  called 
sophrosyne — sometimes  a  mere  euphemism  for  oligarchy,  but 
more  properly  a  spirit  of  self-control,  almost  the  English 
instinct  of  "  not  going  too  far."  Plato  fervently  preached  it 
for  states  and  individuals  in  his  Republic.     It  was  the  ideal 

1  Hellenica,  iv.  4,  3.  ^  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  v.  §^'882. 

*  Mem.  iv.  4,  19. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  175 

that  a  decent  man  held  up  before  his  boy ;  it  was  the  key-note 
of  Xenophon's  conduct  throughout  hfe — it  is  "  dyed  in  the 
wool."  Sound  morals  and  sound,  if  perhaps  slow,  thinking 
are  the  marks  of  the  man  and  of  his  class.  He  draws  himself 
in  Ischomachus,  to  whom  we  shall  have  to  return,  and  suggests 
his  own  training  as  well  as  his  ideals  in  the  picture.  Thucydides 
might  have  classed  him  with  Nicias  "for  a  life  ordered  by  a 
conventional  virtue  " — with  the  suggestion  of  malice  that 
Professor  Bury  finds  in  the  phrase,  if  that  be  the  translation 
— or  more  simply  and  naturally  "  for  his  exact  attention  to 
every  duty  "  ;  ^  and,  malice  or  none,  Xenophon  might  have 
accepted  the  description  and  the  classing. 

In  later  life  it  is  clear  he  had  great  love  of  the  country. 
Possibly  from  the  Peace  of  Nicias  (421),  or  even  earlier,  till 
the  occupation  of  Deceleia  (413)  he  lived  in  the  country  house, 
or  on  the  farm,  of  his  family.^  In  the  books  that  he  writes 
about  Socrates  it  has  been  remarked  that  like  Plato  he  creates 
Socrates  something  after  his  own  image — with  an  interest 
in  things  Persian  and  military  and  agricultural  that  went 
beyond  that  felt  perhaps  by  the  actual  Socrates.  Town- 
bred  men  do  take  to  country  life,  but  the  satisfaction  which 
Xenophon  appears  to  have  found  in  it  goes,  I  think,  beyond 
the  city-dv^eller's  of  his  age.  He  is  as  keen  about  it  as  any 
countryman  on  Aristophanes'  stage,  and  a  good  deal  less 
urban  in  his  ideas  of  life  than  some  of  them. 

If  his  youth  was  spent  largely  in  the  country,  it  might 
help  to  account  for  his  slight  interest  in  two  of  the  chief  pre- 
occupations of  Athens,  politics  and  the  drama.  He  is  far 
removed  from  the  Periclean  democrat ;  when  his  own  tastes 
appear,  he  shows  an  interest  in  Monarchy,  a  preference  for 
it,  that  is  almost  a  prophecy  of  the  later  Greece.  Cyrus  and 
Agesilaos  are  his  heroes — no  Athenian  statesman,  scarcely 
even  Thrasybulus.  Democracy,  as  he  knew  it  in  Elis  or 
Corinth,  he  did  not  care  for,  and  he  was  little  in  Athens  after 

1  Thuc.  vii,  86,  5. 

2  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  i,  §48,  at  all  events,  says  Xenophon, 
belonged  to  the  deme  Erchia  ;  and  that  was  a  country  deme,  on  the 
eastward  side  of  Pentelicos,  perhaps  seventeen  or  eighteen  miles  from 
Athens  (Dakyns'  translation,  vol.  i.  p.  Ixxiii).  Isocrates  belonged  to 
the  sanae  deme  (Jebb,  Attic  Orators,  ii.  p.  432). 


176  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

404.  He  is,  of  course,  more  soldier  than  politician,  and  the 
ideal  household  which  he  sketches  under  the  name  of 
Ischomachus  has  an  order  and  an  efficiency  almost  military 
— the  husband  is  commander-in-chief,  the  wife  is  trained  to 
be  an  able  second  in  command,  and  everything  has  to  be  as 
orderly  as  it  was  on  the  Phoenician  ship,  down  to  the  boots, 
as  we  shall  see.  Democracy  was  another  story — slapdash 
improvisation  at  best,  muddling  through,  and  declining  very 
swiftly  in  chaos,  panic,  and  injustice.  It  may  be  that  he  was 
not  among  the  boys  who  were  bred  in  politics.  Nor  does  it 
appear  that  he  took  much  interest  in  drama.  One  of  the 
speakers  in  the  Memorabilia  mentions  Sophocles  as  a  man 
he  admires  for  his  tragedy,^  but  there  is  little  trace  in 
Xenophon's  books  of  any  great  influence  exerted  upon  himself 
by  tragedy  or  even  of  interest  in  it.  Mr.  Dakyns  speaks  of 
the  dramatizing  and  development  of  his  characters,  Shake- 
speare-wise,^ but  on  the  whole  it  is  more  the  outcome  of  his 
native  instinct  for  story-telling.  Socrates  chaffs  Critobulus 
in  the  Oeconomicus  for  his  readiness  to  rise  at  cock-crow  and 
trudge  off  to  see  a  comedy,®  and  Xenophon  has  more  than 
one  reference  to  the  attack  made  on  Socrates  in  the  Clouds ;  * 
and  there,  I  think,  it  ends.  Dialogue  could  be  learnt  in 
another  school — the  pupil  of  Socrates  need  not  go  to  the 
stage  for  that. 

There  is  in  Xenophon's  Symposium  a  pleasing  character 
called  Niceratos.  When  the  question  goes  round,  "  On  what 
do  you  most  pride  yourself  ?  "  and  it  comes  to  his  turn,  he 
has  an  answer  ready  that  amazes  us.  "  My  father,"  he  says, 
"  in  his  pains  to  make  me  a  good  man,  compelled  me  to  learn 
the  whole  of  Homer's  poems,  and  so  it  comes  about  that  even 
now  I  can  repeat  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  by  heart."  "  But 
you  haven't  forgotten,"  interjects  Antisthenes  the  Cynic, 
"  that  all  the  rhapsodes  know  these  poems  too  ?  "  "  How 
could  I  have,  when  I  listen  to  them  nearly  every  day  ?  " 

^  Mem.  i.  4,  3. 

2  Notes  to  translation  of  Cyrop.  (Everyman  edition),  p.  78.  He 
also  finds  in  the  death  of  Pantheia  -'  Euripidean  "  touches  throughout 
{ibid.  p.  249). 

3  Oecon.  3,  5. 

*  Oecon.  II,  3  ;  and  Symp.  6,  6,  where  the  Syracusan  meaning  to 
be  rude  raises  the  question  of  the  flea's  jump. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  177 

"  Then  do  you  know  any  sillier  breed  than  the  rhapsodes  ?  " 
"  No,  by  Zeus,"  said  Niceratos,  "  I  don't  think  I  do."  ^ 

It  is  interesting  to  find  the  rhapsodes  still  a  flourishing 
profession  in  a  day  when  Euripides  is  expelling  Homer  from 
his  traditional  post  of  teacher  of  all  Greece — "  much,"  says 
Eduard  Meyer,  "  as  among  Germans  Goethe  has  replaced 
the  Bible."  ^  Still  more  interesting  is  it  to  come  on  a  man 
like  the  father  of  Niceratos  in  such  an  age.  "  He  called 
Simonides  a  bad  poet  and  ran  down  Aeschylus,"  says  a  man 
in  the  Clouds  ^ — so  modern  can  people  be  ;  and  here  is  an 
Athenian  citizen  who  makes  his  son  learn  all  Homer  by  heart, 
word  for  word — whose  scheme  of  culture  is  Homer.  There 
are  many  worse  systems  of  education,  duller  and  less  educative. 
One  guesses  that  in  the  house  of  Gryllos  Homer  kept  his  old 
place,*  and  that  the  young  Xenophon,  if  he  could  not  repeat 
the  whole  of  the  poems  word  for  word,  had  his  Homer  by 
heart  in  another  way.  Grote,  at  any  rate,  found  the  Homeric 
note  in  the  Anabasis — "  in  the  true  Homeric  vein  and  in 
something  like  Homeric  language."  ^  Dakyns  remarks  on 
his  old  Attic  words  and  inflexions.  He  had  Homer  at  his 
finger-ends,  like  Plato,  and  unlike  Plato  he  had  no  quarrel 
v/ith  the  poet.  Others  of  the  old  poets  he  quotes — Hesiod, 
Theognis,  and  Epicharmus ;  and  he  makes  Simonides  of  Ceos 
a  speaker  in  his  dialogue  the  Hiero.  It  all  points  to  a  sound, 
quiet  education  in  old-time  literature,  and  the  reader  may 
recall  what  Charles  Lamb  has  to  say  of  the  benefits  he  and 
his  sister  drew  from  the  accident  that  put  them  in  the  way 
of  seventeenth-century  and  not  eighteenth-century  literature. 

The  outdoor  life  of  the  young  Xenophon  is  written  in  his 
books,  but  he  had  other  scenes  than  the  streets.  Twice  over 
he  gives  us  an  account  of  hare-hunting — once  from  the  lips  of 
Socrates,  whom  we  should  not  have  guessed  to  be  so  expert, 
and  once  with  even  more  spirit  and  vividness  from  the  didactic 

1  Symp.  iii.  5,  6.  Cf.  Mem.  iv.  2,  10  ;  and  the  inimitable  description 
of  the  rhapsode  in  Plato's  Ion,  with  his  graces  and  poses  and  artistic 
temperament. 

2  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  v.  §  902.  ^  Clouds,  136 1-8. 

*  In  Mem.  iv.  2,  10,  Euthy demos  has  a  complete  copy  of  Homer. 
It  is  pleasant  to  read  of  Alcibiades  hitting  a  teacher  who  had  no  Homer  ; 
he  was  not  always  so  judicious  (Plut.  Alcib.  2). 

^  Grote,  History,  viii.  379. 
12 


178  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Cambyses,  the  father  of  Cyrus — and  Cambj^ses,  it  would 
appear,  knew  all  about  bird-snaring  too,  and  how  to  do  it  on 
a  winter's  night.^  The  joy  of  the  boy  Cyrus  at  the  sight  of 
the  horse  which  his  grandfather  has  provided  for  his  first 
riding  lessons  may  be  a  reminiscence  of  Xenophon's  own 
boyhood^ — "he  was  more  than  delighted  at  learning  to 
ride"  {lirireveiv  fiavddvaiv  v'irepe)(aipev) .  In  horses  Xenophon 
remained  interested  to  the  end.  As  to  formal  athletics,  he 
seems  to  have  cared  very  little  for  them.  He  lived  for  years 
a  very  few  miles  from  Olympia,  and  he  hardly  mentions  the 
place — certainly  without  any  trace  of  that  interest  which 
always  appears  when  he  feels  it. 

It  was  a  boyhood  ideal  in  many  ways — Homer  and  the 
open  country-side,  the  soundest  of  training  in  great  literature, 
and  the  constant  stimulus  to  observation,  the  constant  variety, 
of  a  boy's  life  on  farm  and  mountain-side — a  wise  and  quiet 
father  (though  he  has  indeed  no  occasion  to  speak  of  him,  and 
so  much  is  deduction) — and  an  early  training  in  religion  and 
SSphrosyne.  And  then  Athens  and  Socrates,  and  his  first 
experiences  of  a  soldier's  life. 

To  discuss  Socrates  at  length  and  the  inter-relations  of  the 
historic  Socrates  with  the  Platonic,  the  Xenophontine  and  the 
xA.ristotelian  Socrates,  would  take  us  too  far  from  the  matter 
in  hand.  That  his  own  pupils  would  know  him  better  than  a 
man  in  the  following  generation,  most  people  would  be  willing 
to  admit.  But  the  more  closely  their  works  are  studied,  the 
pl5,iner  it  becomes  that  neither  Plato  nor  Xenophon  has  felt 
it  necessary  to  confine  himself  to  literal  history.  In  Plato's 
later  works  it  is  notorious  that  "  Socrates  "  is  less  and  less 
like  the  Athenian  who  taught  Plato.  Similarly,  whatever 
his  purpose  when  he  began  to  write,  it  is  clear  that  Xenophon 
from  time  to  time  treats  Socrates  in  much  the  same  way,  and 
credits  him  with  interests  and  conversations  which  the  real 
Socrates  never  had.  "  If  Cyrus  had  lived,"  says  Socrates  to 
Critobulus  ;  and  the  very  words  proclaim  that  here  we  have 
parted  company  with  history.  But  this  is  in  the  Oeconomicus  ; 
yet  the  conversation  with  the  younger  Pericles  in  the  Third 

1  Mem.  iii.  1 1,  8  ;  Cyvop.  i.  6,  39-40. 

2  Cyrop.  i.  3,  3.  On  the  wild  life  of  Attica  see  Mrs.  R.  C.  Bosanquet, 
Days  in  Attica,  p.  305. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  179 

Book  of  the  Memorabilia — with  Socrates  as  mihtary  adviser, 
citing  Mysian  and  Pisidian  parallels — is  a  warning  that  we 
must  not  take  what  we  read  too  literally.  Dichtung  und 
Wahrheit  is  the  key-note  here  as  in  Plato.  Xenophon,  it  is 
well  said,  is  not  a  Greek  Boswell.^  The  Memorabilia  have  not 
the  solid  historical  structure  of  the  Life  of  Johnson,  nor,  it 
must  be  added,  its  amazing  skill  and  perennial  charm.  They 
are  a  contribution  of  great  value  to  our  knowledge  of  Socrates, 
and  yet  rather  in  their  general  impression  than  in  their  detail. 
Here  it  must  suffice  to  deal  with  the  general  significance  of 
the  man  as  a  quickening  force,  an  influence  for  the  deepening 
of  life  in  his  own  generation  and  for  many  that  followed. 

"  He  was  always  in  the  public  eye,"  writes  Xenophon, 
"  for  he  used  to  go  early  in  the  morning  to  the  public  walks 
and  the  gymnasia  ;  and  when  the  market  was  full,  he  was 
conspicuous  there,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  day  he  was  always 
where  he  would  meet  most  people.  And  he  was  generally 
talking."  ^  He  was  easily  recognized.  Plato,  using  Alcibiades 
as  a  speaker — a  name  that  would  allow  a  certain  freedom 
and  vigour  of  speech,  /car  'A\Ki^idBr}v,  as  a  scholiast  on 
Thucydides  put  it,  and  also  because  the  friendship  between 
Socrates  and  Alcibiades  was  only  too  notorious — describes  how 
like  Seilenos  Socrates  looked,  but  how  he  too  was  a  god  within.^ 
He  was  generally  talking,  and  there  were  always  people  ready 
to  listen,  for  the  conversation  was  very  apt  to  take  unexpected 
turns.  Men  spoke  of  his  irony — his  playful  way  of  pretending 
not  to  know,  and  of  pursuing  inquiries  and  suggesting  diffi- 
culties and  new  points  of  view,  till  no  one  was  quite  sure 
where  pretence  left  off  and  earnest  began,  "  Chaerephon,  is 
Socrates  serious  in  all  this,  or  only  joking  ?  "  "If  you  are 
serious  and  what  you  say  is  really  true,  the  life  of  all  of  us 
must  be  fairly  upside  down."  ^  And  it  was  so  amusing,  too, 
for  anybody  not  actually  engaged  in  the  argument ;  ^  the 
most  trifling  admission  might  disconcert  the  opponent,  and 
common  sense  itself  might  be  a  disastrous  ally.  "  You  have 
the  oddest  way,  Socrates,  of  twisting  arguments  every  now 
and  then,  and  getting  them  topsy-turvy."  ^    He  could  make 

^  J.  T.  Forbes,  Socrates,  p.  107.  2  Xen.  Mem.  i.  i,  10. 

3  Plato,  Symp.  215A.  «  Plato,  Gorg.  481  B,  c. 

^  Plato,  ApoL  33c,  ea-riyap  ovk  drjSis.  ®  Gorg.  51IA. 


i8o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

a  man  look  unexpectedly  foolish  ;  and  yet,  while  he  turned 
him  inside  out,  it  was  all  done  in  good  temper  and  with  good 
breeding — maddeningly  so — and  he  was  never  dogmatic  ;  he 
would  suggest  this  or  that,  throw  out  an  idea,  and  take  your 
mind  upon  it ;  but  you  must  be  very  careful  how  you  answer. 
And  then  new  aspects  of  the  thing  would  emerge — this  or  that 
must  be  reconsidered ;  the  suggestion,  which  Socrates  has  dropped 
with  half  an  apology  for  mentioning  the  notion,  involves — it  is 
so  difficult  to  say  quite  what  it  involves.  "  Somehow  or  other, 
Socrates,  there  seems  to  me  to  be  truth  in  what  you  say.  But 
I  feel  like  most  people  ;  I  don't  quite  believe  you."  ^  He  gave 
a  constant  stimulus  to  thought — "  the  unexamined  life,"  he 
said,  "  was  really  un-live-able  for  a  human  being."  ^  "  God 
has  sent  me,"  so  Plato  represents  him  as  saying  in  the  Apology,^ 
"  to  attack  the  city,  as  if  it  were  a  great  and  noble  horse,  to 
use  a  quaint  simile,  which  was  rather  sluggish  from  its  size, 
and  which  needed  to  be  aroused  by  a  gadfly :  and  I  think  that 
I  am  the  gadfly  that  God  has  sent  to  the  city  to  attack  it ; 
for  I  never  cease  from  settling  upon  you,  as  it  were,  from  every 
point,  and  rousing,  and  exhorting,  and  reproaching  each  man 
of  you  all  day  long."  The  part  of  gadfly  which  he  had  to 
play  made  him  unpopular — "  the  more  I  read  about  him," 
wrote  Macaulay,  "  the  less  I  wonder  they  poisoned  him."  * 

The  fascination  of  Socrates  is  described  by  Alcibiades  in 
the  Symposium.^  "  My  heart  leaps  within  me  and  my  eyes 
rain  tears  when  I  hear  his  words.  And  I  observe  that  many 
others  are  affected  in  the  same  manner.  I  have  heard  Pericles 
and  other  great  orators,  and  I  thought  they  spoke  well,  but  I 
never  had  any  similar  feeling  ;  my  soul  was  not  stirred  by  them, 
nor  was  I  angry  at  the  thought  of  my  own  slavish  state.  But 
this  Marsyas  [he  means  Socrates]  has  often  brought  me  to 
such  a  pass  that  I  have  felt  as  if  I  could  hardly  endure  the 
life  which  I  am  leading.  He  makes  me  admit  that  with  great 
needs  of  my  own,  I  neglect  my  self  while  I  am  busy  with  the 
affairs  of  the  Athenians.  He  is  the  only  person  who  has  ever 
made  me  ashamed — and  you  might  not  think  it  was  in  my 
nature  to  feel  shame  before  any  one,  but  I  feel  it  before  him 

1  Gorg.  513c.  2  Plato,  Apol.  38A. 

3  Plato,  Apol.  30E  (F.  J.  Church).  «  Life  of  Macaulay,  ii.  436. 

s  Plato,  Symp.  21SE  and  following,  somewhat  abridged. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  i8i 

and  him  alone.  For  I  know  I  cannot  answer  him  or  say  I 
ought  not  to  do  as  he  bids.  So  I  run  away.  Often  I  should 
be  glad  to  see  him  gone  and  no  more  among  men  ;  but  if  that 
happened,  I  know  I  should  be  more  troubled  than  ever." 
Both  Plato  and  Xenophon  emphasize  again  and  again  the 
kindness  he  showed  to  young  men^ — how  interested  he  was  in 
them,  what  a  delightful  companion  he  was  and  how  wise  a 
friend.  Like  Samuel  Johnson,  he  "  loved  the  young  dogs  of 
this  age,"  and  was  ready  "to  come  and  have  a  frolick  with 
them."^  He  talked  with  them,  read  with  them,^  made  fun 
of  them,  inspired  them,  and  made  life  a  new  and  a  richer  thing 
for  them. 

Of  his  influence  on  the  thought  of  Greece  through  his 
pupils  of  a  more  philosophic  tj/pe,  I  have  not  to  speak.  Xeno- 
phon was  essentially  not  of  the  speculative  habit — indeed, 
as  a  French  critic  suggests,  it  is  only  his  love  of  Socrates  that 
leads  him  to  put  a  little  philosophy  in  one  of  his  books. ^  Even 
so  it  was  to  some  purpose  ;  for  we  are  told  that  a  century 
later  a  young  man,  lean,  long  and  dusky,  came  from  a  Phoe- 
nician town  in  Cyprus  with  a  cargo  of  purple  to  the  Peiraieus  ; 
that  he  went  up  to  Athens,  and  sat  down  in  a  bookshop,  and 
picked  up  the  Second  Book  of  the  Memorabilia  and  read  it  with 
such  pleasure  that  he  asked  the  bookseller  where  such  men 
could  be  found  ;  that  Crates  passed  and  the  bookseller  said, 
"  Follow  him  "  ;  and  so  Zeno  was  enlisted  in  the  study  of 
philosophy,  to  the  lasting  good  of  the  ancient  world.*  Of  all 
schools  the  Stoic  was  the  most  practical,  and  in  his  book 
Xenophon  lays  all  the  stress  on  the  practical  worth  of  Socrates' 
teaching — its  bearing  on  life,  its  steady  trend  to  self-government 
and  to  respect  for  other  men  and  for  the  State. 

Summing  up  briefly  what  Socrates  did  for  Xenophon  and 
others  of  his  build,  and  leaving  Plato  and  Antisthenes  and 
their  sort  on  one  side,  we  may  say  that  Socrates  set  them  think- 
ing— that  his  "  gadfly  "  quality  came  in  here  and  made  it 
impossible  for  them  to  live  a  wholly  "  imexamined  "  life. 
He  taught  them  self-criticism  and  he  insisted  on  knowledge. 
"  Did  you  go  yourself  and  examine  this,  or  how  do  you  know  ?  " 

1  Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson  (ed.  Birkbeck  Hill),  i.  p.  445. 

2  Mem.  i.  6,  14.  *  Croiset,  Xenophon,  p.  94. 
*  Diogenes  Laertius,  vii.  1,1-3. 


i82  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

he  asks  Glaucon.i^  "  Oh,  I  guess,"  said  he.  "  Very  well," 
rejoined  Socrates,  "  about  this  matter  also — when  we  are  no 
longer  guessing,  but  actually  know— shall  we  defer  discussion 
till  then?  "  "Perhaps  it  would  be  better,"  said  Glaucon. 
"  Euthydemos,"  ^  said  Socrates,  "  were  you  ever  at  Delphi  ?  " 
"  Yes,  certainly ;  twice."  "  Did  you  notice  the  inscription 
somewhere  in  the  temple,  '  Know  Thyself  '  ?  "  Yes,  he  had 
seen  it.  Had  he  paid  any  attention  to  it,  or  really  tried  to  get 
a  good  look  at  himself  to  see  what  he  was  ?  No,  he  hadn't  ; 
he  thought  he  knew  already.  And  Socrates  has  his  text,  and 
makes  the  young  man  realize  how  much  self-examination 
means  ;  and  after  that  Euthydemos  "  realized  that  he  would 
never  be  a  man  worth  while,  unless  he  consorted  with  Socrates  ; 
so  he  never  left  him  except  when  necessary,  and  he  used  to 
imitate  him  too  in  some  ways.  And  when  Socrates  saw  how 
he  felt,  with  the  minimum  of  worry  and  the  utmost  simplicity 
and  clearness  he  used  to  initiate  him  into  what  he  held  most 
needful  to  know  and  to  do."  ^ 

Above  all  he  laid  the  emphasis  on  things  human ;  he  could 
not  understand  how  people  would  discuss  "  the  nature  of  all 
things,"— the  "cosmos,  as  the  sophists  call  it,"— and  the 
laws  that  govern  the  heavenly  bodies— and  the  One  and  Many 
and  the  Flux,  and  so  on.  For  himself  he  preferred  themes 
that  bore  on  human  life — what  is  piety  or  impiety  ?  beauty  ? 
ugliness  ?  right  and  wrong  ?  sophrosyne  ?  madness  ?  a  state, 
a  citizen,  rule  or  a  ruler  of  men  ?  *  His  influence  made  many 
desire  virtue,  and  he  held  out  hopes  to  them,  that,  if  they 
would  take  heed  to  themselves,  they  would  be  kaloi  kdgathoi— 
he  never  promised  to  teach  them  that,  but  he  was  conspicuously 
one  himself,  and  so  he  led  them  to  hope  that  by  copying  him 
they  might  become  so.^  He  made  good  citizens  of  them, 
he  emphasized  respect  for  the  city's  law,  he  taught  them  how 
to  be  good  friends,  to  be  kind  and  pure  and  pious.  So  says 
Xenophon  in  passage  after  passage,  in  plain  language  which 
anybody  could  understand ;  and  Plato  in  his  richer  and 
wonderful  way  says  the  same.  And  the  significance  of  this 
was  very  great,  for  it  was  a  reply  to  the  sophistic  upset  of 
all  decency,  loyalty,  and  society.     He  was  laying  foundations 

1  Mem.  iii,  6,  lo-i  i,  2  Mem.  iv.  2,  24,  s  Mem.  iv.  2,  40. 

*  Mem.  i.  I,  1 1,  16.  6  Mem.  i.  2,  2. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  183 

anew  on  which  human  life  might  rest,  and  laying  them  for 
ever,  for  now  they  should  rest,  not  on  tradition  unexamined, 
but  on  knowledge,  thorough,  deep-going,  and  proven.  Like 
Kant,  as  Eduard  Meyer  suggests, — like  Goethe,  as  Carlyle 
emphasizes, — he  overcame  scepticism  by  going  through  witij 
it,  by  criticism.  And  he  knew  the  strength  of  the  sophists' 
position  ;  he  knew  the  impulse  of  desire,  so  he  owned,  and 
had  only  overcome  it  by  battle.^ 

Perhaps  the  greater  the  teacher,  the  more  divergence  there 
will  be  among  his  pupils,  as  one  and  the  other  seizes  and  em- 
phasizes different  aspects  of  truth  which  he  himself  has  held 
together  in  some  synthesis  thought-out  or  instinctive.  There 
were  among  Socrates'  followers  those  who  were  led  to  as 
thoroughgoing  an  individualism  as  the  ancient  world  ever 
saw.  His  emphasis  on  knowledge  meant  the  individual — 
not  quite  as  the  sophists  had  taught,  but  still  it  was  a  fair 
deduction  from  "  Know  Thyself."  The  stress  which  Socrates 
laid  on  ethical  knowledge — even  virtue  without  knowledge 
of  itself  was  hardly  virtue  at  all  for  him — required  that  every 
man  should  consciously  direct  and  organize  his  own  life  by 
his  own  light  of  reason.  The  corrective  lay  in  that  reference 
of  life  to  the  divine  will  which,  Xenophon  again  and  again 
insists,  was  his  constant  teaching — the  use  of  divination  and 
sacrifice.  "  KaSSvvafiiv  B'  epBetv — there  is  no  better  motto," 
he  used  to  say,  referring  to  the  line  of  Hesiod : 

Ka88vvafjLLV  S'  epdeiv  lep"  adavaroicn  deoiai — 
Give  all  thou  canst  in  sacrifice  to  heaven.  ^ 

Xenophon  seems  to  harp  upon  this  string  with  a  purpose,  and 
it  is  easy  to  see  that  he  had  in  mind  the  accusation  of  impiety 
which  had  brought  his  death  on  Socrates.  The  First  Book  of 
the  Memorabilia  is  very  much  a  defence  against  the  charges 
of  Anytos  and  Meletos  and  the  popular  beliefs  on  which  they 
rested.  Yet  the  same  note  of  reference  to  the  divine  is  sounded 
in  Plato's  Apology,  and  there  remains  the  famous  "divine  sign."  ^ 

1  Cicero,  Tusc.  Disput.  iv.  -^y,  80,  Cum  ilia  {sc.  vitia)  sibi  insita,  sed 
ratione  a  se  dejecta  diceret. 

2  Mem.  i.  3,  2,  quoting  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  336.  I  hope  the 
Wordsworthian  echo  helps  out  the  sense. 

3  See  E.  Caird,  Evolution  of  Theology,  i.  72  ;  J.  Adam,  Gifford 
Lectures,  p.  322  ;  J.  T.  Forbes,  Socrates,  p.  223,  an  interesting  discussion 
of  modern  explanations. 


i84  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

In  the  present  state  of  psychological  knowledge — or  inquiry, 
perhaps,  it  should  be  called — he  would  be  a  bold  man  who 
would  dogmatize  on  the  nature  of  this  "  sign,"  to  hatixoviov. 
Plutarch  and  Apuleius  knew  perfectly  well  what  it  was  ;  but 
their  knowledge  is  outworn.  But  it  may  certainly  be  said 
that  the  credit  of  Socrates'  "  sign,"  whatever  its  precise  nature, 
never  stood  higher.  It  will  not  now  be  so  readily  put  down 
to  delusion  or  imposture  as  once.  If  a  more  or  less  Enghsh 
word  is  any  help  in  such  a  case,  a  word  with  suggestion  rather 
than  definite  or  precise  signification,  that  word  would  be 
intuition  ; — but  until  we  know  more  about  intuition,  we  had 
better  use  the  word  only  tentatively ;  and  it  was  so,  we  might 
expect,  that  Socrates  used  his  neuter  adjective,  half  turned 
into  substantive  by  the  definite  article.  In  any  case,  man 
was  not  for  Socrates  "  mere  man,"  and  his  pupil  perhaps  was 
not  merely  translating  for  himself — it  is  most  likely  that  he 
was  honestly  quoting — when  he  drove  home  the  lesson  of 
divination  and  sacrifice  on  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  State  and 
by  Greek  belief  generally.^ 

As  for  the  old  myths,  which  Pindar  toned  down  and 
Aeschylus  re-interpreted  and  which  Euripides  so  relentlessly 
re-stated  in  the  old  terms  with  the  terrible  contrast  of  a  new 
setting — it  would  seem  that  teacher  and  pupil  let  them  drop. 
Piety  lay  in  rite  and  faith  and  obedience,  not  in  old  tales.^ 
What  Euripides  would  have  said  to  Plato's  new  myths  was 
written  a  generation  earlier  in  the  Hippolytus — mj^hs  take 
us  nowhere — 

fivOois  S'  SXKas  (pepofjiea-da.^ 

The  fact  that  this  signal  movement  back  to  religion  followed 
the  age  of  questioning  is  worth  study,  for  it  was  not  a  blind 
reaction  at  all,  nor  a  semi-political  matter  as  in  1 815. 

In  other  ways  the  influence  of  Socrates  upon  Xenophon 
must  have  been  considerable.  Socrates  was  a  critic  0^  ^emo- 
cracy — a  believer  in  the  expert.  He  was  given  to  praising 
Sparta  and  Crete  as  well-governed.*    It  was  made  a  point 

^  Mem.  i.  3,  i,  v6fico  TroXeas,  as  the  Pythian  priestess  also  taught. 

2  Oracles  perhaps  did  not  regain  quite  their  old  place.  Xenophon's 
description  of  Diopeithes  as  fidXa  xpv^l^oXoyos  dvrjp  {Hellenica,  iii.  3,  3)  is 
curious.     The  fidXa  is  a  surprise. 

^Hippolytus,  197.  *  Plato,  Crito,  52E. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  185 

against  him^  that  he  taught  his  friends  to  despise  the  estab- 
lished laws  by  insisting  that  it  was  folly  for  the  city  to  choose 
its  rulers  or  archons  by  lot — nobody  would  wish  to  sail  upon 
a  ship  where  the  pilot  was  drawn  by  lot,  or  to  emplo3^  a  car- 
penter so  chosen,  or  even  a  flute  player ;  such  language  was 
bound  to  set  the  young  up  to  despise  the  constitution.  Here 
the  accuser  touched  a  live  issue — a  great  many  people  had  at 
one  time  or  other  played  with  the  idea  of  abolishing  lot — it  had. 
been  attempted,  and  it  was  a  recognized  method  of  subverting 
Democracy.  Xenophon,  as  we  have  seen,  belonged  perhaps 
to  a  family  whose  sympathies  were  only  doubtfully  popular  r 
and  his  teacher's  views  appealed  to  him,  as  we  can  see  in  the 
supposed  discussion  of  Socrates  with  the  younger  Pericles 
where  the  Areopagus  is  praised — "  can  you  name  any  similar 
body  trying  cases  and  doing  other  business  with  more  honour, 
legality,  dignity,  or  justice  ?  "  ^  Why,  asks  Socrates  in 
another  chapter,  should  you  be  afraid  to  speak  before  cobblers 
and  carpenters  and  coppersmiths,  when  you  can  discuss  things 
without  nervousness  before  the  first  men  of  the  city  ?  ^  This 
question,  we  read,  was  addressed  to  Charmides,  a  relative  of 
Plato  and  of  Critias,  to  encourage  him  to  embark  on  political 
life.  This  Charmides  did,  and  he  lost  his  life  fighting  to  the 
last  to  prevent  the  return  of  Thrasybulus  and  the  democrats. 
It  almost  looks  like  a  change  of  plan  between  Books  I  and  HI 
of  the  Memorabilia,  for  such  a  chapter  was  hardly  likely  to 
clear  the  memory  of  Socrates  with  readers  among  the  group  of 
Anytos.  For  Anytos,  though  better  known  as  the  accuser  of 
Socrates,  was  one  of  Thrasybulus'  patriot  band.^ 

One  of  the  hardest  things  to  do  when  we  study  Socrates' 
relations  with  his  pupils,  or  the  Greek  drama  in  the  hands  of 
Sophocles,  Euripides,  and  Aristophanes,  is  to  remember  steadily 
that  Athens  was  engaged  in  the  most  dreadful  of  her  wars  all 
the  time.  If  Xenophon  talked  with  Socrates  or  listened  to 
him  whenever  he  got  the  chance,  it  is  certain  that  he  must 
have  done  some  kind  of  military  service  every  summer  of  the 
last  ten  years  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  unless  the  story  is 
true  that  he  was  for  a  time  a  prisoner  in  Thebes.  Where  he 
served  and  in  what  battles  he  fought,  it  would  be  vain  to  try 

^Mem.i.2,g.  ^  Mem.  iii.  5 ,  20.  ^  Mem.  Hi.  7,6. 

*  For  Anytos  and  his  attitude  to  Socrates,  see  Chapter  IX.  p.  276. 


i86  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

to  guess.  Perhaps  if  the  tradition  be  true  that  he  was  in  the 
knights,  he  may  have  been  occupied  with  cavalry  work  in 
Attica  itself.  Cavalry  at  all  events  was  throughout  life  his 
chief  military  interest. 

In  411  Athens  was  subjected  to  the  futile  and  bloody 
revolution  associated  with  the  name  of  the  Four  Hundred. 
It  was  the  reflex  of  the  Athenian  catastrophe  in  Sicily  in  413 — 
there  must  be  retrenchment  of  expenses  in  the  city,  some 
steadier  and  more  responsible  system  of  government  than 
that  of  snap  votes  in  the  Ecclesia  and  random  oratory.  After 
the  manner  of  a  democracy,  says  Thucydides,^  they  were  very 
amenable  to  discipline  while  their  fright  lasted.  Probouloi 
were  appointed — a  council  of  ten  elder  men  to  advise  and 
guide.  The  device  was  a  familiar  oligarchic  one,  used  in 
Dorian  cities,  and  described  by  Aristotle  in  after  years  as 
definitely  "  not  democratic."  ^  Among  them  were  Hagnon, 
father  of  Theramenes,  and  perhaps  Sophocles.^  We  need  not 
follow  the  agonizing  struggle — wonderfully  successful — to  get  a 
fleet  launched  and  manned  and  to  maintain  the  war  against 
Sparta  ;  nor  need  we  go  into  the  details  of  the  oligarchic  plot, 
planned  with  one  set  of  notions  and  carried  through  for  another. 
Two  things  stand  out.  The  people  of  Athens  disliked  the 
new  plan  from  the  outset — a  modified  democracy  {firj  rov 
avrov  Tpoirov  S7)/jiOKpaTovfjbevoi<i)  had  a  suspicious  sound  ;  but 
it  was  a  case  of  duress — can  you  carry  on  the  war  without 
the  help  of  the  King  of  the  Persians  ?  The  other  thing 
is  the  amount  of  preparation,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  for  the 
change.  The  pamphlet  of  the  Athenian  Oligarch  of  the 
year  424,  handed  down  to  us  among  Xenophon's  works, 
shows  what  would  have  been  wished  but  was  so  far  impossible 
in  the  judgment  of  that  very  acute  observer.  Clubs  and 
groups  of  persons  dissatisfied  with  the  constitution  had  grown 
up  and  organized  themselves  as  the  war  went  on — "  for  the 
management  of  trials  and  elections."  *    The  "  constitution  of 

^  Thuc.  viil.  I.  2  Aristotle,  Pol.  iv.  12,  8  ;  vi.  5,  13. 

2  Lysias,  12,  c.  Erat.  §  65.     See  p.  128. 

*  Thuc.  viii.  53  ;  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  ^77.  Isocrates,  Paneg. 
79,  gives  the  clubs  in  retrospect  a  high  patriotic  colour.  E.  Meyer, 
Gesch.  des  Alt.  iv.  §696,  gives,  a  list  of  men  of  note  Avho  favoured  a 
modified  democracy.  Plato,  Theaet.  173D,  adds  dinner  and  avK-qTpi^es 
to  the  political  interests  of  these  clubs. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  187 

our  fathers  "  was  the  catchword,  7rdTpto<i  •jroXtreia,  democracy 
as  Solon  and  Cleisthenes  had  conceived  it,  before  the  radical 
innovations  of  those  fifty  years  of  commerce  and  maritime 
empire  and  rule  by  an  unbridled  ecclesia  had  brought  the  land 
to  war  and  ruin — democracy  with  an  Areopagus  to  guide  and 
discipline  it — a  democracy  of  men  with  a  stake  in  the  country, 
men  who  could  provide  their  own  arms  for  its  service,  and  no 
more  state  pay  for  the  citizen  functions  of  legislation  and 
administration  of  justice.  The  abolition  of  state  pay  meant 
unmistakably  the  exclusion  of  the  poorer  classes,  the  con- 
stituents of  the  Cleons  and  Hyperboluses.  All  this  was  in  the 
air,  and  the  dreadful  blunder  of  the  Sicilian  Expedition  and  its 
appalling  failure  won  adherents  for  the  idea  who  might  never 
otherwise  have  considered  it. 

Whether  Gryllos  and  his  son  Xenophon  took  any  part  in 
the  change  of  constitution  one  way  or  the  other,  we  do  not 
know.  Gryllos,  of  course,  may  have  been  dead  for  all  we  can 
tell.  It  is  not  impossible  that  the  young  Xenophon,  with 
his  small  attachment  to  democracy,  may  have  favoured  the 
movement — may  have  taken  a  hand  in  it.  He  was  about 
twenty  years  old,  and,  tradition  says,  a  knight.  Thucydides 
twice  speaks  of  the  services  of  a  body  of  "  young  men  " — 
almost  using  it  as  a  technical  term.  There  is  a  curious  question 
in  one  place  as  to  the  text — as  it  stands  it  reads  "  a  hundred 
and  twenty  Hellenic  youth  ('E\\7]ve<i  veavcaKot)  whose 
services  they  [the  conspirators]  used  for  any  act  of  violence  they 
had  in  hand."  ^  Hellenes  is  the  doubtful  word,  but  hardly  a 
word  that  anyone  but  the  historian  himself  would  have  thought 
of  inserting  ;  but  what  does  it  mean  ?  Does  it  mean  the 
youths  were  not  Scythian  bowmen,  police  and  the  like  ? — a 
dull  suggestion  ;  or  were  the  Hellenic  Youth,  like  the  Young 
Turks  of  to-day,  and  Young  England  of  Disraeli's  days,  a 
political  party,  actual  or  half-actual  and  half -ideal  ?  When  the 
tumult  takes  place  which  ends  in  the  demolition  of  the  fort  of 
Eetioneia  and  the  overthrow  of  the  Four  Hundred  in  favour  of 
Theramenes  and  the  "  Five  Thousand,"  one  of  the  figures  on 
the  scene  mentioned  by  Thucydides  is  Aristarchos.     Thucy- 

^  Thuc.  viii.  69,  4  ;  x^'^po^py^'^v  is  a  euphemism  of  grim  associations. 
NeaviaKOL  in  Aristophanes,  Knights,  730,  on  which  see  R.  A. 
Neil's  note. 


i88  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

dides  does  not  often  mention  men  idly  or  by  accident,  and  he 
adds  that  Aristarchos  had  "  certain  young  knights  "  with  him 
(twv  iTnreojv  veaviaKot).^  The  anger  of  Theramenes  at  the 
destruction  of  the  fort  was  recognized  as  diplomatic,  and  it 
soon  ended  in  the  popular  movement  for  the  "  Five  Thousand  "; 
"  but  Aristarchos  and  the  opponents  were  angry  in  earnest," 
though  to  no  purpose.  Aristarchos  is  a  sinister  figure  ;  for, 
some  days  later,  when  he  and  his  confederates  had  to  fly,  he 
did  his  country  a  final  disservice  in  betraying  Oinoe  to  the 
Boeotians.2  On  this  occasion  he  had  with  him  "  certain  archers 
— of  the  most  barbarian  kind  "  ;  and  what  superlative  bar- 
barians they  were,  Thracian  or  Scythian  or  whatever  more 
barbarous  there  was,  we  are  left  to  guess.  The  young  men 
(veavia-Kot)  reappear  with  short  swords  at  that  meeting  of 
the  Thirty  in  council  in  404,  which  ended  in  the  killing  of 
Theramenes, 2  and  once  more  it  is  believed  they  were  knights, — 
for  knights  were  at  all  events  in  the  service  of  the  Thirty  against 
Thrasybulus,^ — unless  we  are  content  to  render  it  merely  as 
cavalry,  though  what  other  cavahy  the  Thirty  could  have 
it  is  hard  to  see.  Eduard  Meyer  remarks  that  Xenophon  re- 
cords the  events  and  especially  the  feeling  and  procedure  of  the 
knights  with  the  liveliest  recollection.  ^  Grote  recognizes  a 
certain  sympathy  in  Xenophon  as  historian,  but  neither  he  nor 
Beloch  quite  says  that  Xenophon  served  in  the  knights  for  the 
Thirty. 

That  the  knights  were  throughout  of  the  oligarchic  party — 
of  the  party  at  least  opposed  to  extreme  democracy  and  in 
favour  of  its  modification — is  intelligible  and  is  established. 
That  Xenophon  served  among  them  is  a  conjecture — possible 
enough,  but  a  conjecture  still.  That  he  sympathized  with 
the  ideal  of  modified  democracy — if  democracy  there  must 
be — is  very  likely.  But  as  to  his  part  in  the  events  of  411, 
even  as  to  his  presence  in  Attica  at  all — we  have  absolutely 
no  evidence  whatever.     The  oligarchy  of  404  is  another  matter, 

1  Thuc.  viii.  92. 

2  Thuc.  viii.  98.  Aristarchos,  somehow  or  other,  was  brought  to 
trial  for  this  betrayal,  and,  it  was  remembered,  was  given  the  full 
advantage  of  the  laws  in  self-defence  on  the  occasion  (Xen.  Hellenica, 
i.  7.  28). 

2  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  23.  *  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  4,  10. 

*  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt,  v.  §  757. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  189 

for  our  knowledge  of  it  is  chiefly  drawn  from  Xenophon  himself, 
and  his  account  of  it  is  one  of  the  most  vivid  sections  of  his 
Hellenica — so  vivid,  that,  forgetting  how  brilliantly  Thucydides 
can  describe  scenes  which  he  never  saw,  at  Plataea  or  Pylos, 
our  critics  are  certain  that  Xenophon  was  in  Athens,  or  in 
Attica  somewhere,  throughout  the  whole  stormy  time. 

Xenophon  in  ever  memorable  words  describes  the  arrival 
in  Athens  of  the  news  of  the  crowning  disaster  of  Aegospotami 
— the  night  when  no  man  slept.  Such  an  experience,  and  all 
the  dreadful  events  between  that  night  and  the  final  peace- 
making of  the  parties  in  Athens  on  the  expulsion  of  the  Thirty, 
could  not  but  affect  the  mind  and  spirit  of  a  man  gifted  with 
any  feeling  at  all.  The  long  fight  against  famine,  when  the 
corn  trade  route  was  finally  held  by  the  enemy — the  anxiety 
as  to  what  the  conquerors  would  do  with  the  captive  city 
and  people — the  dragging  negotiations  of  Theramenes — the 
humiliation — the  loss  of  empire,  walls,  and  even  docks — the 
Thirty  tyrants,  and  the  killing  of  fifteen  hundred  people  by 
them — experiences  of  this  kind  write  themselves  down  in 
character.  Life  becomes  another  thing,  and  the  man  who 
looks  out  on  it  is  changed  for  ever, 

Sparta  did  not  andrapodize  Athens — kill  the  grown  meu 
and  sell  the  women  and  children  and  blot  out  the  city ;  but 
her  decision  had  to  be  waited  for.  Lysander  was  capable  of 
an5rthing,  and  the  Thebans  and  Corinthians  urged  it,  men 
said.^  One  wonders  if  any  in  those  days  of  waiting  remembered 
Euripides'  Trojan  Women,  and  how  it  was  given  on  the  stage 
in  415,  and  read  it  again  with  a  new  understanding.  Athens 
was  spared,  and  historians  have  written  of  the  nobility  and 
magnanimity  of  Sparta.  Eduard  Meyer  suggests  that  the 
fact  that  Athens  was  the  centre  of  the  spiritual  life  of  Greece 
may  have  weighed  ;  but  Sparta  rarely  showed  any  sign  of 
caring  for  anything  of  the  kind.^  More  weight  would  be 
attached  by  the  Spartans  to  the  problem  of  what  to  do  with 

1  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  19.  Cf.  the  treatment  of  Acragas  in  406  by  the 
Carthaginians  (Diod.  Sic.  xiii.  89,  90) — a  city  of  200,000  people. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  20,  says  the  Spartans  refused  to  destroy 
a  city  -'  that  had  done  good  service  in  the  greatest  dangers  that  had 
ever  come  on  Greece."  So  Andocides,  i.  142.  When  one  recalls  Lichas, 
Callicratidas,  and  King  Pausanias,  it  becomes  more  credible  that  Sparta 
was  in  some  degree  amenable  to  such  considerations. 


igo  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Attica  and  the  great  haven  if  Athens  were  deleted.  Perhaps 
it  was  not  hard  to  understand  the  Theban  desire  to  see  this 
done,  and  "  to  leave  the  land  for  the  grazing  of  sheep  like 
the  Crisaean  plain."  If  Thebes  did  not  gain  the  vacant 
territory,  would  it  be  Corinth — or  Megara  ?  In  any  case,  it 
could  not  be  incorporated  in  Laconia.  Fewest  questions 
would  be  raised,  and  fewest  dangers  incurred,  if  Athens  were 
left — left  crippled,  helpless,  and  enslaved  under  domestic 
tyrants.     And  here  we  reach  the  story  of  the  Thirty. 

Till  the  discovery  of  the  Aristotelian  Athenian  Constitution, 
Xenophon's  narrative  went  unchallenged,  supported  as  it 
was  in  most  particulars  by  the  almost  contemporary  speeches 
of  Lysias  and  the  references  of  Isocrates,  Athenians  all  and 
"  of  years  to  remark  what  happened."  But  the  new  book 
has  another  version  of  the  events,  and  perhaps  its  novelty 
or  the  glitter  of  Aristotle's  name  dazzled  for  a  while  a  number 
of  historians.  It  is  very  far  from  being  a  satisfactory  piece 
of  historical  work.  Not  to  leave  the  period  which  concerns 
us,  the  "  constitution  of  Draco  "  was  seen  from  the  first  to 
be  an  absurdity  and  probably  the  product  of  some  pen  of 
411  or  404.  The  narrative  of  the  Four  Hundred  contradicted 
Thucydides  on  the  question,  a  crucial  one  :  were  or  were  not 
the  Five  Thousand  really  constituted  before  the  Four  Hundred 
fell  ?  Aristotle,  if  it  be  he,  says  they  were  ;  Thucydides  that 
they  were  not.  Aristotle  details  the  procedure,  with  such 
care  that  a  German  scholar  could  hold  that  "  no  transforma- 
tion was  ever  so  legally  done  "  ;  but,  as  Eduard  Meyer  saw,^ 
Aristotle  omitted  the  real  aspects  of  the  revolution  to  depend 
on  acta,  or  on  the  editor  of  ada.^  And  then,  after  saying, 
in  chapter  30,  that  the  Five  Thousand  were  chosen,  in 
chapter  32  he  adds  that  it  was  "  only  in  word " — i.e. 
they  were  chosen,  only  they  reaUy  weren't.  Meyer's  vindica- 
tion of  Thucydides  is  generally  accepted.^  When  we  come 
to  the  Thirty,  we  find  history  still  more  thoroughly  re-written. 
The  order  of  events  familiar  to  us  in  Xenophon's  pages  was 
this  : — ist  :    the  introduction  of  a  garrison  of  seven  hundred 

1  E.  Meyer,  Forsch.  ii.  pp.  406-436. 

2  "As  false  as  a  bulletin,"  we  are  told,  was  a  proverb  of  Napoleon's 
time. 

2  Even  by  Mr.  E.  M.  Walker,  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  p.  1 14. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  191 

men  under  the  Spartan  Callibios,  followed  by  wholesale  killing 
of  opponents  and  the  disarming  of  the  people  ;  2nd  :  the 
remonstrance  of  Theramenes  and  his  violent  end,  followed  by 
more  massacre,  and  the  flight  of  citizens  till  refugees  filled 
Megara  and  Thebes ;  3rd  :  the  occupation  of  Phyle  by 
Thrasybulus.  The  new  book  inverts  the  order,  and  gives  : — 
ist  :  the  return  of  Thrasybulus  ;  2nd  :  the  death  of  Thera- 
menes ;  3rd  :  the  disarming  of  the  people,  heightened  savagery, 
and  the  garrison.^  On  what  authority,  for  Aristotle  was 
not  yet  born  ?  That  would  appear  to  have  been  some  book 
or  pamphlet,  written  apparently  to  vindicate  Theramenes. 
Whether  it  is  the  judgment  of  Aristotle  himself,  or  merely 
transcribed,  the  Constitution  picks  out  as  the  best  of  Athenian 
politicians,  "  after  the  old  (or  ancient)  ones  " — a  curiously 
careless  phrase — Nicias,  Thucydides  the  son  of  Melesias,  and 
Theramenes.  The  author  of  this  selection  knows  the  slander 
against  Theramenes  as  wrecker  of  every  constitution — but, 
no  !  he  says,  Theramenes  really  tried  to  keep  each  constitution 
in  turn  away  from  the  course  of  injustice  ;  he  showed  the 
aptitude  of  an  ideal  good  citizen  to  live  under  any  constitution, 
and  it  was  his  resistance  to  illegality  that  won  him  ill  will.^ 
It  might  fairly  be  asked,  whether  anyone  would  guess  from 
the  Constitution  that  Theramenes  had  been,  as  we  know  he 
was,  one  of  the  Thirty  at  all.^ 

It  is  not  till  we  read  the  speeches  of  Lysias  against 
Eratosthenes  and  Agoratos  that  we  realize  the  furious  hatred 
men  felt  for  Theramenes  ;  and  then,  as  we  put  together  one 
or  two  remarks  of  Thucydides  with  the  enthusiastic  praise 
of  Aristotle's  anonymous  authority,  we  begin  to  see  what 
lies  behind.  Thucydides  says  that  Theramenes  was  capable 
in  speech  and  judgment ;  *  and  he  gives,  as  we  have  seen, 
a   remarkable   eulogy   to   the   fugitive   constitution   labelled 

^  The  order  of  Xenophon  is  accepted  by  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt. 
V.  §  749,  and  by  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  p.  116. 

^  KB.  noX.  28,  5. 

^  And  while  we  are  asking  questions,  why  does  the  author  omit 
to  state  that  Critias  also  was  one  of  the  Thirty  ?  Is  it  deference  to  the 
school  of  Socrates  ? 

*  Thuc.  viii.  68,  4.  Cf.  Aristophanes,  Frogs,  967  £f.,  where  Euripides 
is  made  to  claim  him  with  pride  as  a  pupil,  "  a  man  who  can  always 
get  out  of  a  mess." 


192  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

nowadays  mth  that  statesman's  name.^  Theramenes  repre- 
sented the  party  of  modified  democracy — of  the  impossible  ; 
and  Aristotle  is  following  the  lead  of  one  of  his  adherents, 
who,  perhaps  some  time  after  the  events,  wrote  an  account 
of  them  which,  in  the  unobtrusive  way  of  a  good  party 
pamphlet,  readjusted  facts,  and,  by  this  simple  form  of  appeal 
to  history,  cleared  the  fame  of  the  great  man  associated  with  the 
ideal  of  ancestral  or  modified  democracy.  The  Spartan  garrison, 
he  would  have  us  think,  was  really  fetched  in  after  the  death 
of  Theramenes,  so  that  he  was  n(^  responsible  for  it,  nor  for 
the  debt  of  a  hundred  talents  to  Sparta  incurred  by  those  who 
hired  it  and  left  by  them  for  the  democracy  of  the  restora- 
tion to  repay.  The  killing  of  Theramenes  thus  almost  becomes 
a  reply  to  the  occupation  of  Phyle,  a  death  for  the  People. 

Now  let  the  reader  look  at  the  speeches  of  Lysias,  a  con- 
temporary, a  resident,  and  a  man  ruined  by  the  Thirty. 
Lysias,  it  is  true,  is  angry  and  eager  for  revenge,  which  it 
would  seem  the  court  did  not  give  him — but  he  is  addressing 
men  who  had  lived  through  the  actual  events,  only  two  or 
three  years  away  ;  men  open  to  insinuations,  but  as  well  aware 
as  himself  of  the  actual  course  of  events.  The  situation 
precludes  major  falsifications,  and  it  gives  the  real  atmosphere. 

Then  turn  to  Xenophon.  Xenophon,  as  a  historian,  is 
admittedly  careless,  and  he  will  omit  things  when  he  so  pleases. 
He  does  like  the  Spartans  and  he  does  not  like  the  Thebans, 
and  omissions  due  to  both  feelings  can  be  charged  against 
him.  But  the  more  I  read  him,  and  the  more  I  study  what 
is  made  of  his  work  by  the  scholars  who  have  given  to  it 
the  closest  care  and  scrutiny,  the  more  convinced  I  am  that 
th'^r^  is  no  -ground  for  accusing  him  of  deliberate  falsification. 
Wrong  impressions  his  carelessness  will  produce,  and  some- 
times his  party  feeling  ;  but  in  the  latter  case  most  often 
the  thing  corrects  itself.  To  come  then  to  Theramenes,  and 
to  suppose  for  the  moment  that  Xenophon  wishes  to  mislead 
us — in  which  direction  will  it  be  ?  Is  he  likely  to  falsify 
history  out  of  sympathy  with  the  party  of  Lysias,  with  the 
more  furious  end  of  the  extreme  democrats  ?  Or  with  the 
moderates,  whose  spokesman  supplied  Aristotle's  information  ? 
We  have  seen  that,  if  we  can  at  all  divine  what  his  party 
^  Thuc.  viii.  97,  2.     See  Chapter  III.  p.  78. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  193 

politics  were,  he  leaned  to  this  side  himself.  But  his  story, 
as  we  have  it,  clashes  with  the  moderate's  version.  Then 
he  blundered  and  forgot  ?  One  would  have  thought  it 
impossible  to  read  the  clear,  vivid  narrative,  thrUling  with 
the  spirit  of  the  eyewitness,  and  suggest  such  a  thing.  Does 
he  or  does  he  not  make  a  hero  of  Theramenes  ?  Or  does  he 
nothing  extenuate  nor  set  down  aught  in  malice  ?  He  quite 
openly  shows  Theramenes'  connexion  with  Lysander — his 
long  delay  in  the  Spartan  camp,  while  the  siege  of  Athens 
dragged  on  for  three  intei^inable  months  of  famine  ^ — ^his 
part  in  the  tragic  surrender  to  Sparta — and  he  definitely 
names  him  among  the  Thirty,  He  does  not  attack  him  in 
the  envenomed  spirit  of  Lysias  for  his  share  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Thirty ;  and,  by  the  time  Theramenes  is  killed, 
he  leaves  the  reader  with  a  friendly  feeling  for  the  man — a' 
feeling  shared,  it  is  clear,  by  many  contemporaries  who  felt 
there  was  something  in  the  death  at  least  that  was  loyal 
and  patriotic,  that  in  a  sense  redeemed  the  life.  Many  felt 
this,  as  we  can  see ;  for  Lysias  protests  fiercely  against  the 
notion  that  Theramenes  died  for  the  Athenians.  It  is  very 
hard  to  find  partisanship  in  the  story  told  by  Xenophon, 
or  slovenliness.  It  makes  the  impression  of  the  record  of  a 
candid  and  honourable  witness,  on  whose  mind  were  deeply 
and  indelibly  engraved  the  actual  events  of  the  most  awfuF 
days  in  his  country's  history.^  There  are  things  a  man  cannot 
live  through  and  forget. 

It  must  have  been  with  curious  feelings  that  the  pupil  of 
Socrates  found  that  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  Thirty  was  another 
member  of  the  school.  Alcibiades  had  had  his  day,  and  now  Cri- 
tias  ruled,  pupil  but  hardly  follower  of  Socrates.^  Poet,  thinker, 
orator,  and  adventurer,  this  man  had  been  banished,  thanks  to 
Cleophon,  who,  it  is  said,  had  enough  culture  to  quote  a  telling 
line  of  Solon  against  him,  written  for  his  ancestor  long  ago  : 

elirififvai  KpiTir)  ^apBorplx'^  irarpos  daoveiv — 
Bid  Critias  of  the  yellow  hair  obey  his  sire.* 

^  Read  Xenophon's  account  of  it,  Hellenica,  u.  2,  21. 

*  E.  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  A  If,  v.  §  749,  holds  it  unthinkable  that  Xeno- 
phon, who  was  an  eyewitness  and  in  the  Knights,  could  have  falsely 
set  the  calling  in  of  the  garrison  before  the  death  of  Theramenes. 

3  See  Mem.  i.  i  and  2.  *  Aristotle,  Rhetoric,  i.  1375. 

13 


194  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

An  aristocrat  in  exile,  he  had  employed  himself  in  a  rebellion 
of  serfs  against  the  rulers  of  Thessaly.  He  had  come  back 
with  the  exile's  usual  idea  of  vengeance,^  but  perhaps  already 
Cleophon  had  been  hustled  out  of  the  world  by  a  judicial 
murder.  But,  for  all  his  brain  and  energy,  he  was  an  impossible 
ruler,  and  he  had  as  his  colleague  the  most  brilliant  politician 
after  Alcibiades  of  the  decade — Theramenes,  the  adroitest  of  all 
moderates,  the  "  buskin  "  that  fitted  all  parties,  who  always 
played  for  his  own  hand  and  always  saw  the  moment  to  change 
sides  successfully,  a  natural  traitor.  ^  Theramenes  saw  that  the 
violence  of  Critias  was  doing  no  good — it  was  not  sense  to  kill 
men  whom  the  demos  regarded,  at  least  if  they  did  the  kaloi 
kdgathoi  no  harm  ;  even  an  oligarchy  needed  some  kind  of 
partners  ;  and  so  he  became  suspect.  The  populace  was  dis- 
armed and  the  garrison  was  got  in  ;  the  rulers  were  free  to  kill 
more  victims,  and  they  began  to  include  the  metics,  the  resident 
aliens  of  the  commercial  community — which  was  folly,  as  Thera- 
menes saw,  and  he  said  so.  So  they  resolved  to  be  rid  of  him, 
and  they  had  him  killed,  as  Critias  planned,  but  it  cost  a  good 
deal.  He  made  a  defence  that  was  remembered  ;  he  fought 
for  his  life,  and  was  dragged  shouting  across  the  agora — every- 
body saw  and  knew — and  then  with  the  hemlock  his  gaiety  of 
spirit  triumphed,  and  he  died  with  a  jest  that  went  down  to 
posterity  as  a  signal  exhibition  of  character  and  as  a  fulfilled 
prophecy.  Critias,  beside  writing  of  the  origin  of  the  gods, 
had  written  a  poem  on  the  familiar  game  Kottabos  ;  so  Thera- 
menes, when  he  had  drunk  off  the  cup,  jerked  out  the  last  drops, 
with  the  gay  challenge  :  "  For  Critias  let  this  be,  for  Critias 
the  noble  !  " — "  I  know  well,"  wrote  Xenophon  at  this  point, 
"  that  such  sayings  are  scarcely  worth  recording,  but  I  coimt 
it  an  admirable  trait  in  the  man,  that,  with  death  so  near, 
neither  his  sense  nor  his  humour  deserted  him."  ^  All  Athens, 
we  may  be  sure,  heard  the'  tale  at  once,  and  thought  it  over. 
And  then  came  news  indeed — Thrasybulus  had  occupied 
Phyle,*  an  old  hill  fort  on  one  of  the  two  significant  passes  over 

1  Xen,  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  15.   Cf.  Difed.  Sic.  xiii.  92  (end),  in  what  spirit 
the  Syracusan  exiles  would  come  back — for  killings  and  confiscations. 

2  See  speech  of  Critias,  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  24-34. 
»  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  56. 

*  See  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  Rambles  and  Studies  in  Gveece,  ch.  viii. 


THE  YOUTH  OF  XENOPHON  195 

the  mountains  between  Attica  and  Boeotia,  between  Parnes 
and  Cithaeron.  He  was  a  democrat  leader,  who  had  refused 
a  place  in  the  Thirty,  and  now  he  came  with  a  band  of  the 
refugees  from  Thebes.  Here  I  would  quote  with  pleasure 
from  Mrs.  R.  C.  Bosanquet's  charming  book,  Days  in  Attica. 

"  As  a  post  of  observation  its  position  is  unequalled.  No 
boats  could  slip  across  the  Saronic  Gulf,  no  force  of  Athenians 
muster  in  the  plain,  no  band  attempt  the  passes  of  Hymettus, 
but  the  watchman  at  Phyle  would  see  the  lowering  of  the  sail 
or  the  light  glinting  on  the  spears  of  moving  men.  The  whole 
of  the  Cephissian  plain  from  Phalerum  to  Pentelicus  lies  in 
view,  clear  as  an  illuminated  missal,  in  spite  of  the  well  of  air, 
two  thousand  five  hundred  feet  in  depth,  that  swims  between. 
Athens  can  be  seen,  but  it  looks  only  a  group  of  infinitesimal 
dots  and  lines.  Without  the  aid  of  opera-glasses  I  have  made 
out  the  dark  rectangular  outline  of  the  Acropolis,  the  lighter 
pyramidal  form  of  the  Parthenon,  and  the  white  gleaming 
houses  of  the  town.  The  Bay  of  Salamis  is  clear,  though 
Piraeus  is  hidden  behind  hills.  What  a  fine  move  of  Thrasy- 
bulus  to  come  up  to  this  eyrie  and  wait  for  the  moment  when 
he  could  sweep  eagle-like  on  his  prey,  to  deliver  the  city  from 
the  tyrants !  " 

For  the  Garibaldi-like  story  that  follows — the  fight  in 
the  snowstorm,  the  surprise  of  the  guards  of  the  Thirty,  the 
seizure  of  the  Peiraieus,  the  victory  of  Munychia,  the  gallant 
death  of  the  prophet,  the  fall  of  Critias,  and  all  the  shifting 
movements  of  Thirty  and  Ten,  the  City  and  Peiraieus  parties, 
the  coming  of  the  Spartans  again,  and  the  overriding  of 
Lysander  by  King  Pausanias — let  the  reader  go  to  Xenophon 
himself  and  read  with  feehng  and  intelligence — and  then  say 
where  Xenophon' s  sympathies  lay,  whether  they  are  not  where 
his  own  must  lie.  When  did  he  write  the  story  ?  Many  guesses 
have  been  made,  but  the  indications  are  not  enough  to  leave  us 
sure.  It  does  not  matter  greatly.  What  concerns  us  is  that 
here  is  a  tale  of  heroes,  and  Xenophon  has  that  native  instinct 
for  heroism  that  makes  the  telling  of  it  a  joy  to  him,  and  leaves 
a  story  that  caiinot  die.  » 

The  man  has  lived  through  a  great  deal.  From  the  open- 
air  pleasures  and  interests  of  the  country  deme,  he  has  come  to 
Athens  and  learnt  to  love  Socrates,  and  foimd  in  his  friendship 


196  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

a  stimulus  that  shaped  life  for  him  ;  he  has  served  his  coimtry 
in  battle,  he  has  felt  with  her  in  her  fall  and  gone  through  the 
night  of  anguish  with  her ;  ^  he  has  seen  how  far  astray  the  most 
cultured  and  brilliant  of  men  can  go,  how  hopeless  any  govern- 
ment is  that  does  not  carry  the  people  with  it,  that  neglects  the 
fundamental  ancient  distinction  between  right  and  wrong ; 
he  has  given  up  the  idea  of  modified  democracy,  ancestral 
constitutions,  and  other  notions  of  the  study  and  the  clique  ; 
he  has  seen  heroism  again  in  its  simplest  and  manliest  forms, 
and  the  great  spectacle  of  a  people  reunited  ;  and  he  ends  his 
tale  for  the  time  being  with  the  quiet  and  significant  words — 
"  So  they  swore  oaths  that  they  would  remember  no  evil,  and  to 
this  day  they  live  together  in  one  state,  and  Demos  abides  by 
his  oaths." 

One  question  remains,  if  anyone  care  to  ask  it.  Among 
the  exiles  who  came  back  in  404  was  an  old  man,  who  had  not 
seen  Athens  for  twenty  years — a  man  with  perhaps  a  dash  of 
foreign  accent,  pedantic  a  little,  something  of  an  archaist,  a 
moderate  in  politics,  in  thought  and  mind  and  utterance  a  man 
of  the  old  regime,  busy  still  with  a  history  at  which  he  had 
been  working  for  years,  but  which  he  had  not  finished.  Legend 
says  that  Xenophon  rescued  that  history  or  part  of  it  from 
destruction  ;  he  certainly  wrote  an  ending  for  it — a  piece  of 
work  in  which  his  natural  gifts  are  battling,  whether  he  knew 
it  or  not,  with  a  great  influence. 2  How  came  he  under  that 
influence  ?  Was  it  one  of  style  only,  or  did  Xenophon  meet 
Thucydides  ? 

*  I  cannot  make  anything  of  the  remark  of  Hemardinquer,  La 
Cyropidie,  p.  10,  that  ''  X6nophon  est  sec  dans  les  Hellenica  sur  la 
ruine  d'Athdnes  et  presque  joyeux," 

*  See  Bruns,  Lit.  Portrdt,  pp,  38  ff. 


CHAPTER   VII 

PERSIA 

They  say  the  Lion  and  the  Lizard  keep 
The  Courts  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank  deep ; 
And  Bahrdm,  that  great  Hunter — the  Wild  Ass 
Stamps  o'er  his  Head,  but  cannot  break  his  Sleep. 

SO  runs,  in  its  famihar  English  garb,  the  stanza  of  one  of 
the  great  mediaeval  poets  of  Persia.  And  in  one  of  those 
courts  Mr.  E.  G.  Browne  copied  down  a  similar  reflec- 
tion, written  there  in  1 791-2  :  "  Where,"  asked  the  writer,  in 
Arabic  verse,  "  are  the  proud  monarchs  of  yore  ?  They  multi- 
plied treasures  which  endured  not,  neither  did  they  endure."  ^ 
The  two  moralists  between  them  bring  out  how  transitory  is 
fame.  Takht-i-Jamshid  (Throne  of  Jamshid)  is  the  modem 
name  of  Persepolis,^  and  Jamshid,  it  would  appear,  is  a  mere 
hero  of  legend.^  Bahrlm,  that  great  Hunter,  was  a  king  of  the 
Sasanian  house  that  held  Persia  for  four  centuries  (a.d.  226-651) 
and  fought  with  the  Roman  Empire  till  the  deluge  of 
Islam  came  and  swept  them  away.*  The  great  builder  of 
Persepolis  was  Darius,  and  yet  it  would  seem  that  he  and 
Cyrus  and  the  whole  Achaemenian  dynasty  have  passed  from 
the  national  memory  and  imagination.  What  the  West 
knows  of  them  it  has  learnt  for  itself  from  their  monuments 
and  from  what  their  enemies,  the  Greeks,  told  of  them.    Of  all 

^  E.  G.  Browne,  A  Year  amongst  the  Persians,  p.  254. 

2  E.  G.  Browne,  Literary  History  of  Persia,  p.  112. 

3  Jam-shid  or  Jam  is  the  Yima  of  the  Avesta,  and  Yama  of  the 
Hindu  mythology.  He  is  a  demigod,  belonging  to  a  period  before 
Indians  and  Persians  separated. 

*  Bahram  is,  I  think,  the  Varanes  V  (a.d.  420-440)  of  the  diction- 
aries, ''  surnamed  Gour,  or  the  Wild  Ass,  on  account  of  his  passion 
for  the  chase  of  that  animal " — a  passion  which  Xenophon,  at  least, 
would  forgive  to  a  king  (cf.  Anab.  i.  5,  2;  Cyrop.  viii.  i,  36.  Cf. 
Chapter  VIII.  p.  346). 


igS  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  world-empires  before  Rome's,  that  of  the  Achaemenians 
was  most  significant  for  mankind,  and  in  more  ways  than 
one.  Our  present  task  is  Greek  history,  but  Greek  history 
at  the  period  under  review  is  not  to  be  understood  apart  from 
the  Persian  Empire. 

Persia  has  contributed  to  the  progress  of  mankind  both 
by  what  she  has  done  and  by  what  she  failed  to  do.  The 
Persian  tried  to  conquer  the  Greek  and  failed,  and  by  the 
attempt  and  the  failure  brought  out  the  grandeur  of  Hellas 
and  gave  the  Hellen  a  glad  self-consciousness,  in  the  strength 
of  which  those  triumphs  were  won  which  the  world  associates 
with  the  Greek  name,  and  which  have  done  so  much  to  make 
the  world.  Even  such  an  involuntary  contribution  to  history 
is  enough  to  entitle  Persia  to  a  more  sympathetic  study  than 
she  usually  receives.  They  were  no  common  foes  who  called 
into  being  all  that  Greece  had  of  genius  and  power.  In  spirit, 
in  courage,  in  character,  the  best  of  the  Greeks  recognized  the 
Persians  to  be  their  peers.  But  in  positive  achievement  the 
Persian  also  set  new  ideals  before  mankind — ideals  to  which 
indeed  he  did  not  himself  attain,  but  which  he  left  to  Mace- 
donian and  Roman — ideals  for  the  world's  good  government 
with  the  utmost  of  unity  and  cohesion  combined  with  the 
largest  possible  freedom  for  the  development  of  race  and 
individual  within  the  larger  organism.  An  Indo-European 
people  with  great  gifts,  which  in  some  degree  they  still  keep, 
the  Persians  break  upon  the  West  with  a  series  of  surprises. 
In  antiquity  they  first  conceived  and  constructed  a  world- 
empire  that  should  last.  Then  for  six  centuries  they  are 
governed  by  foreigners,  Macedonian  and  Parthian,  but  they  rise 
again  to  a  new  national  life,  only  too  significant  for  the  West. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  they  produce  the  only  Oriental  poets  who 
have  much  influenced  the  thought  and  literature  of  the 
European  peoples.  In  religion  their  story  is  as  interesting. 
In  their  early  day  we  see  rise  among  them  one  of  the  world's 
great  prophets,  Zoroaster.  It  is  now  no  longer  held  proven 
that  he  is  among  those  who  definitely  contributed  to  the 
development  of  Israel's  religion,^  but,  as  we  can  see  in  Plutarch, 
his  ideas  spread  far  in  the  ancient  world  ;  and  to  this  day  his 
own  faith  lives  and  remains  of  interest  to  those  who  care  to 
*  J.  H.  Moulton,  Early  Zoroastrianism,  p.  321. 


PERSIA  199 

know  what  the  human  mind  can  do  in  seeking  after  God. 
Mani  (a.d.  215/6-273/6)  and  his  religion  are  another  manifesta- 
tion of  Persian  interest  in  reUgious  thought,  and  St.  Augustine 
is  a  witness  to  the  wide  influence  of  a  thinker  who  tried  to 
reconcile  Christ  and  Zoroaster.  Islam  itself  suffered  change 
when  it  reached  Persia;^  and  the  nineteenth  century  saw 
once  more  in  Bdbiism  and  Bahaiism  the  vitality  of  the  Persian 
mind.  So  far  as  history  is  yet  unfolded,  no  other  Eastern 
people,  apart  from  the  Jews,  has  meant  so  much  to  the  West 
or  has  taken  so  large  a  part  in  shaping  the  civilization  and 
the  thought  of  mankind. 

When  the  Persians  first  appear  as  newcomers  in  the 
West,  we  recognize  in  them  a  sound  and  healthy  primitive 
people.  They  have  won  ascendancy  over  the  Medes ;  and 
Croesus,  King  of  Lydia,  so  Herodotus  tells  us,  is  preparing  to 
attack  them.  To  him  comes  the  wise  Sandanis.  "  O  King," 
said  Sandanis,  "  thou  makest  ready  to  take  the  field  against 
men  of  this  sort  ;  men  who  wear  trowsers  of  leather,  and  the 
rest  of  their  clothing  is  of  leather ;  and  they  eat,  not  what  they 
would,  but  what  they  have,  for  their  land  is  rough.  More- 
over, they  use  not  wine,  but  drink  water  ;  they  have  no  figs  to 
eat,  nor  anything  else  that  is  good."  ^  They  are  a  people  from 
a  harbourless  land  of  mountain  and  desert,  but  (in  spite  of 
Sandanis)  not  without  fertile  areas,  which  in  time  they  turned 
to  good  account.  Pliny  gives  us  lists  of  their  trees  and  fruits,^ 
and  the  peach  to  this  day,  in  spite  of  the  vagaries  of  European 
spellings,  carries  its  origin  in  its  very  name — the  "  Persian  " 
fruit.  For,  mountaineers  as  they  were,  the  Persians  loved 
gardens  —  kings  and  satraps  in  later  days  vied  with  one 
another  in  the  beauty  of  their  gardens  and  their  "  paradises."  * 
The  height  and  build  of  the  Persians,  men  and  women,  im- 
pressed the  Greeks.  "  Their  names,"  says  Herodotus,  "  are 
like  their  bodily  shape  and  their  magnificence  ;  "  and  Xeno- 

^  See  E.  G.  Browne,  A  Year  amongst  the  Persians,  ch.  vi. ;  R.  A.  Nichol- 
son, Mystics  of  Islam,  p.  8,  urges  that  Sufism  is  not  essentially  Persian. 
See  also  T.  W.  Arnold,  Preaching  of  Islam  2,  p.  21 1.  , 

2  Herodotus,  i.  71. 

3  Pliny,  N.H.  xii.  3  ;  xv.  13,  14  ;  22  ;  xix.  3,  etc.  Cf.  G.  Rawlin- 
son.  Ancient  Monarchies*,  vol.  iii.  139. 

*  See  notes  of  How  and  Wells  on  Herodotus,  vii.  5  ;  and  evidence 
there  cited. 


200  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

phon  tells  his  fellow-soldiers  that  he  fears,  if  they  consort 
with  "  the  tall  and  beautiful  women  and  maidens  of  the  Medes 
and  Persians,"  they  may,  like  the  lotus-eaters,  forget  the 
homeward  journey.^  That  the  Persian  troops  were  among 
the  world's  best  fighting  men  was  evident  from  the  victories 
of  Cyrus  and  Darius ;  at  Plataea  itself  in  479  B.C.,  so  far  as 
"spirit  and  valour  "  went,  they  were  not  inferior  to  the  Spartans ; 
and  it  would  seem  that  to  the  end,  though  badly  armed, 
badly  organized,  and  badly  led,  the  Persian  soldier  showed 
no  degeneracy  in  personal  courage.^  The  Greeks  remarked 
the  decency  and  the  courtesy  of  their  manners,^  and  Alexander 
the  Great  found  among  them  a  tone,  a  charm,  and  a  dignity 
which  neither  Greek  nor  Macedonian  possessed.  There  is  apt 
to  be  in  monarchical  and  episcopal  societies  a  habit  of  manners 
which  a  republic  does  not  always  produce,  and  to  emperors 
and  people  of  position  it  is  very  attractive,  especially  when 
enhanced  by  contrast. 

"  They  teach  their  boys,"  says  Herodotus,*  "  from  five 
years  old  to  twenty,  three  things  only — to  ride  the  horse,  to 
shoot  with  the  bow,  and  to  speak  the  truth."  The  epigram 
is  not  to  be  forced ;  writing  and  reading  as  part  of  Persian 
education  are  implied  already  by  the  inscriptions  of  Cyrus, 
and  still  more  by  those  of  Darius.  Darius,  indeed,  it  has  been 
remarked,  in  his  most  famous  inscription  at  Behistun  lays 
great  emphasis  on  truth  and  falsehood.  "  Ljdng  they  reckon 
the  greatest  of  shame."  ^  Riding  may  not  have  been — and 
probably  was  not — an  accomplishment  of  the  race  in  their 
mountain  days,  and  Xenophon  attributes  the  development  of 

1  Herodotus,  i.  139  ;  Xen.  Anab.  iii,  2,  25.  Cf.  How  and  Wells  on  the 
story  of  Phye,  Herodotus,  i.  66 :  --  This  passage  is  very  significant  for 
Greek  stature :  this  '  daughter  of  the  gods,  divinely  tall  and  most  divinely 
fair,'  was  only  about  5  feet  10  inches."  The  Persian  names  fascinated 
Aeschylus;  cf.  Persae,  21,  302,  959,  for  lists  of  them.  A  similar  turn 
of  mind  is  seen  in  the  geographical  references  of  his  Prometheus. 

*  Maspero,  Passing  of  the  Empires,  p.  806. 

2  See  the  curious  data  of  Herodotus,  i.  133,  134 ;  Xen.  Cyrop.  i.  2,  16  ; 
V.  2,  17  ;  viii.  i,  42.  The  passages  rather  suggest  the  Greek  want  of 
dignity  which  the  Romans  noticed.  The  Persian  habit  of  kissing 
one's  friends  on  lips  (Herodotus,  i.  1 34  ;  Xen.  Ages.  5,4;  Cyrop.  i.  4,  27). 

*  Herodotus,  i.  136. 

^  Herodotus,  i.  138  ;  note  also  his  addition,  "  and  debt  next  to  it," 
and  the  reason  given  that  a  debtor  is  bound  to  lie  a  little. 


PERSIA  201 

cavalry  to  the  reasoned  judgment  of  Cyrus  the  Great. ^  The 
description  which  he  gives  of  that  great  conqueror's  boyhood 
is  perhaps  more  the  ideal  of  the  historian  than  an  actual  tran- 
script from  Persian  life ;  but  in  any  case  it  contains  features 
which  we  know  to  be  historical,  and  it  is  certainly  the  most 
delightful  picture  of  boyhood  in  the  classics.  It  may  be 
noted  that  Xenophon  emphasizes  the  Persian  practice  of 
educating  boys  of  noble  birth  "  at  the  gates  of  the  king  "  ^  or 
of  the  satrap,  and  of  training  them  in  "  justice  "  ;  and  he 
describes  a  discipline  which  was  not  unlike  the  Spartan,  but 
with  perhaps  a  good  deal  more  hunting  and  more  emphasis  on 
truth. 

Persian  religion  clearly  interested  Herodotus,  but  as  he 
did  not  speak  the  language,  there  remain  in  his  account  of  it 
some  gaps  and  some  confusions.^  Xenophon  seems  to  have 
taken  little  interest  in  learning  what  the  Persian  religion 
really  was.  He  represents  Cyrus  as  uniformly  religious,  but 
in  rather  a  Greek  way — his  Cyrus  is  pious  as  he  himself  is. 
Probably,  like  most  Greeks  and  Romans,  he  assumed  that  the 
religion  of  other  races  would  be  essentially  like  his  own,  but 
with  different  names.  From  the  sacred  books  of  the  old 
Persians  we  can  supplement  and  correct  what  the  Greeks 
tell  us.*  It  results  that  Zoroaster  was  a  real  and  historical 
man  and  a  prophet,  who  died  by  violence  towards  the  age 
of  eighty,  abouf.  583  b.c.  ;  and  the  spread  of  his  teaching 
from  Bactria  (Balkh),  where  he  made  his  first  great  convert 
in  King  Vishtashpa  (Hystaspes),  can  be  traced  over  Persia. 
Strabo  in  a  later  day  reveals  its  dissemination  outside  Persia, 
but  the  modern  Parsis  are  emigrants  who  went  to  India  to 
escape  Muslim  persecution,  not  a  survival  of  a  converted 
Indian  commxmity.  In  the  popular  mind  Zoroastrianism  is 
connected  with  the  conflict  of  Ormuzd  (Ahuramazda)  and 

1  Cyrop.  iv.  3,  8  ;  and  he  adds  that  to  this  day  no  Persian  of  rank 
will  be  seen  on  foot,  §  23.  Against  this  may  be  set  the  fact  that  Cyrus 
was  sculptured  on  foot,  and  the  Kings  were  represented  on  the  darics 
kneehng  to  draw  the  bow. 

^  Xen.  Anab.  i.  9,  3.  '  Herodotus,  i.  131  ;  iii.  16. 

*  See  A.  V.  Williams  Jackson,  Zoroaster  the  Prophet  of  Ancient  Iran, 
a  book  accepted  by  the  learned  in  Persian  ;  J.  H.  Moulton's  Early 
Zoroastrianism  ;  and  E.  G.  Browne,  Literary  History  of  Persia  (p.  30)4 
and  A  Year  amongst  the  Persians,  ch.  xiii.,  xiv. 


^ 


202  FR^M  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Ahriman,  with  the  Magians,  with  strange  customs  in  marriage 

and  the  disposal  of  the  dead.     That  there  is  confusion  here, 

and  has  been  from  the  days  of  Herodotus,  is  clear.     What 

appears  to  be  the  case  is  that  the  Magians  were  really  not 

Persian  at  all,  but  an  aboriginal  tribe  of  earlier  inhabitants 

lingering  in  the  land  and  slowly  imposing  their  religion  and 

its  customs  upon  the  Persians   themselves.^    Zoroaster  was 

an  Iranian,  and  in   many  striking  points  his  faith  and  the 

practices  and  superstitions  of  the  Magians  were  in  conflict. 

Zoroaster  knows  no  magic,^  no  astrology,^  no  images,*  and — 

unless  in   a  very  modified  sense   of  the  word — no  temples. 

No    religious    buildings   are    found    among    the    ruins    of 

Pasargadae  or  Persepolis.^    The  Magian  left  the  dead  to  be 

torn  by  birds  and  dogs,  a  very  primitive  trait — and  this 

usage  was   at   last  imposed  on  the  Zoroastrian  religion,  as 

the  Persian  dakhmas  and  the  Bombay  "  towers  of  silence  " 

witness  ;    but  the  earlier  Zoroastrian   buried  his   dead,  and 

the  tombs  of  his  kings  stand  to  this   day.     "  For  all  the 

profundity  of  Zarathushtra's  thinking  ...  he  was  intensely 

alive  to  the  practical  realities  of  life  ;  and  there  was  a  singular 

absence  of  the  mystical  element  in  his  teaching.     A  little 

more  of  it  might  perhaps  have  helped  his  religion  to  secure 

a  much  larger  part  in  human  history.     A  more  conspicuous 

absence  is  that  of  asceticism,  which  cuts  him  off  strikingly 

from  spiritual  kinship  with  India."  *    Tradition  states  that 

Zoroaster  was    thrice    married,   and   had   several   sons   and 

daughters,  and  that  the  three  wives  survived  him  "^ — Herodotus, 

we  may  recall,  remarked  polygamy  among  the  Persians  and 

their  pride  in  large  families  of  sons.     The  marriage  of  very 

near  relations  seems   Magian  rather  than   Zoroastrian,  and 

does  not  survive  among  the  Parsis. 

^  See  J.  H.  Moulton,  Early  Zoroastrianism,  p.  193,  and  Essays  and 
Studies  presented  to  William  Ridgeway,  pp.  249-260. 

2 Moulton,  ibid.  p.  160.  'Moulton,  ibid.  p.  237. 

*  Moulton,  ibid.  p.  391. 

^  But  Darius  (at  Behistun)  speaks  of  restoring  places  of  worship 
which  the  Magians  had  destroyed — i.e.  altars  on  mountain  heights 
(Justi,  in  Geiger  und  Kuhn,  p.  427). 

'  Moulton,  Early  Zoroastrianism^  p.  146. 

'■  Wilhams  Jackson,  Zoroaster,  p.  20  ;  see  also  E.  G.  Browne,  Lit. 
Hist.  Persia,  p.  161,  on  the  contrast  here  with  Mani. 


PERSIA  203 

At  the  centre  of  Zoroaster's  religion  stands  the  supremacy 
of  Ahuramazda — "  a  great  god  is  Ahuramazda,  who  hath 
created  this  earth,  who  hath  created  that  heaven,  who  hath 
created  man,  who  created  gladness  of  man"  ;  so  runs  the 
inscription  of  Darius,^  and  the  Avesta  speaks  in  the  same 
style.  "  They  count  it  unlawful,"  says  Herodotus,^  "  to  set 
up  images  and  shrines  and  altars,  and  such  as  do  they  charge 
with  folly,  I  think,  because  they  do  not  hold  the  gods  to  be 
in  the  image  of  man,  as  do  the  Greeks.  Their  wont  is  to 
ascend  to  the  tops  of  the  mountains  and  do  sacrifice  to  Zeus, 
calling  the  whole  circle  of  the  sky  Zeus.  They  sacrifice  also 
to  the  sun  and  the  moon  and  earth  and  fire  and  water  and 
winds.  To  these  alone  they  sacrifice  from  of  old,  but  they 
have  learnt  also  to  sacrifice  to  Ourania,  having  learnt  it  from' 
the  Assyrians  and  Arabs.  The  Assyrians  call  Aphrodite- 
MyHtta,  the  Arabs  Alilat,^  and  the  Persians  Mitra.^  The 
sacrifice  of  the  Persians  to  the  gods  mentioned  is  this.  They 
neither  make  altars  nor  light  fire,  when  they  would  sacrifice. 
They  viie  no  libation,  nor  flute,  nor  garlands,  nor  meal;" 
and  Herodotus  goes  on  to  describe  the  sacrifice  of  the  ox, 
the  prayer  "  for  good  for  all  the  Persians  and  for  the  King," 
and  the  presence  of  the  Magian  "  chanting  a  theogony," 
for  "  without  a  Magian  it  is  not  their  custom  to  do 
sacrifice." 

Herodotus  shows  already  the  foreign  influences  at  work — 
he  remarks,  a  little  later,  that  of  all  men  the  Persians  are 
most  ready  to  accept  foreign  customs.  One  gathers  that,  as 
China  to-day  has  three  religions  of  very  different  origins  more 
or  less  fused  and  supplementing  one  another,  so  the  Persian 
in  time  found  little  difficulty  in  accommodating  the  faith  of 
Zoroaster  with  the  practices  of  the  Magians  and  the  unclean 
goddesses  of  the  Semites.  Cyrus  was  perhaps  not  a  Zoroastrian 
at  all ;   his  Elamite  ancestors  had  probably  long  worshipped 

^  At  Persepolis  ;  and  similarly  at  Ganj  Namah  near  Hamadan 
(Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  Past  and  Present,  p.  172). 

^  Herodotus,  i.  131  f. 

2  The  Al-Ldt  of  Muhammad's  heathen  opponents. 

*  That  Mithras  was  not  a  feminine  god  was  long  ago  noted.  Moulton, 
Early  Zoroastrianism,  pp.  238,  400,  discusses  the  blunder  and  its  origin, 
connecting  it  with  the  pairing  of  Mithras  and  Anahita,  and  calling  it  a 
"  helpful  mistake." 


204  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Babylonian  gods.^  Darius,  however,  is  thought  to  have  been 
definitely  and  decisively  Zoroastrian — "  a  man  for  whom 
religion  was  obviously  a  very  real  experience"  2 — he  mentions 
no  other  gods  beside  Ahuramazda  in  his  inscriptions.  In 
Egypt,  as  king  he  repaired  certain  temples,  but  the  one  that 
he  built  at  the  oasis  of  Kharga  he  dedicated  to  Amen-Ra, 
the  god  of  the  luckless  monotheist  Amen-hotep  IV.  A 
hymn  of  fifty  lines,  placed  in  the  mouth  of  the  eight  great 
primeval  gods — and  a  very  remarkable  hymn — proclaims  the 
greatness  of  Amen-Ra ;  "no  god  begot  him,  what  god  is 
like  unto  him  ?  "  It  is  suggested  that  Darius  found  so  many 
attributes  shared  by  Amen-Ra  and  Ahuramazda  that  he  felt 
the  hymn  would  honour  both,  if  they  were  two  and  not  one.' 
Xerxes,  and  his  queen  Amestris,  fell  into  ways  abhorrent  to 
Zoroaster,*  though  he  repeats  in  a  formal  inscription  the 
phrases  of  his  father  about  Ahuramazda.'^  Artaxerxes  II 
lapsed  further  and  set  up  images  of  Anahita,  and  used  her 
name  in  his  inscriptions — "  By  the  grace  of  Ahinramazda, 
Anahita,  and  Mithra,  I  built  this  palace.  May  Ahuramazda, 
Anahita,  and  Mithra  protect  me  !  "  • 

It  is  interesting  to  find  that  the  greatest  of  the  Achae- 
menians — greatest  in  outlook,  genius,  and  achievement — ^was 
so  definitely  monotheistic,  while  his  successors,  sons  of  the 
harem  in  every  sense,  declined  to  idolatry.  What  the  common 
people  and  the  nobles  did,  all  the  time,  we  can  only  guess.  It 
was  in  all  probability  from  them  that  Herodotus  gained  his 
knowledge,  and  if  it  is  confused,  here  at  least  his  informants 
were  probably  no  less  confused.'    The  last  broken  sentence  of 

^  On  this  point  Professor  E.  G.  Browne  writes  to  me  :  *'  I  don't  think 
it  has  been  satisfactorily  proved  that  the  Achaemenians  were  Zoro- 
astrians.  The  fact  that  they  called  God  Ahura  Mazda  proves  nothing  ; 
the  pagan  Arabs  recognized  Allah  Ta'dld  (God  Most  High),  but  this 
did  not  make  them  Muhammadans." 

*  J.  H.  Moulton,  Early  Zoroastvianism,  p.  44. 

'  See  E.  A.  Wallis  Budge,  History  of  Egypt,  vol.  vii.  pp.  66-69. 

*  J.  'R.Movlton, Early  Zoroastrianism,Y>'P-  57'  ^29;  Herodotus,  vii.  114. 
'  Curzon,  Persia,  ii.  156.     See  later,  p.  228. 

'Moulton,  Early  Zoroastrianism,  p.  yy.  Berosus,  ap.  Clem.  Alex. 
Protr.  5,  65,  an  interesting  section  on  Persian  religion.  The  inscription 
is  at  Susa. 

'  They  bore  names,  many  of  which  pointed  to  the  old  gods  (Meyer, 
Gesch.  iii.  %78). 


PERSIA  205 

Thucydides  tells  how  Tissaphernes  went  to  Ephesus  and 
sacrificed  to  Artemis. 

Of  the  influence  of  foreign  nations  on  a  people  so  briUiant 
and  lively  of  mind  as  the  Persians  we  need  little  evidence. 
Herodotus  attests  it  in  their  practice,  chiefly  noting  the  evil 
they  learnt  from  their  neighbours.^  He  also  speaks  of  their 
adoption  of  the  Median  dress  in  peace  and  the  Egyptian  corslet 
in  war.  2  Modern  arch  aeologists  remark  the  influence  successively 
of  Assyria,  Lycia,  Egypt,  and  Greece  in  their  art  and  archi- 
tecture.^  The  result  was  a  hybrid  style,  which  lasted  till  the 
Achaemenian  dynasty  fell  and  then  disappeared. 

The  founder  of  the  Persian  Empire  was  C3n:us.  Xenophon 
emphasizes  the  greatness  of  the  man  ;  he  details  the  races 
he  ruled,  peoples  of  many  languages,  the  vast  expanse  of  his 
kingdom  (so  vast  that  it  would  tax  a  man's  endurance  merely 
to  travel  over  it  from  the  palace  that  was  its  centre),  the 
terror  of  Cyrus'  name  that  went  with  the  charm  of  it,  and  the 
reHance  on  his  wisdom  ;  and  he  insists  that  such  a  man  deserves 
study.*  He  was  the  founder ;  and  to  the  end  part  of  the 
ritual  of  the  Persian  king's  installation  was  the  donning  of 
the  robe  of  Cyrus.  ^  The  ruins  of  his  city  still  stand  at  Pasar- 
gadai — a  city  never  finished.  ^  His  tomb  is  there,  a  rectangular 
roofed  chamber  of  white  stone,  of  extraordinary  solidity,  on 
a  square  platform  approached  by  steep  and  lofty  steps.' 
Alexander  the  Great  visited  it  and  was  angry  that  his  generals 
should  plunder  it,  and  he  repaired  the  injuries  they  had  done.® 
Not  very  far  away  stands  a  monument,  a  pillar,  with  a 
sculptiired  figure.  The  features  show  a  man  of  Iranian  origin, 
with  a  face  of  a  European  type,  the  head  bald  or  shaven  on 
top,  the  hair  short  and  matted,  and  the  beard  slightly  curled. 

1  Herodotus,  i.  133. 

2  Herodotus,  i.  135.  For  the  Median  dress,  cf.  Xen.  Cyrop.  i.  3,  2  ; 
viii.  I,  40 ;  3,  I  ;  8,  8, 

'  Curzon,  Persia,  ii.  pp.  189-193  ;  Babelon,  Manual,  pp.  148,  149, 
150,  157. 

*■  Xen.  Cyrop.  i.  i,  5.  "*  Plut.  Artax.  3. 

•  Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  ch.  xix. 

'  E.  G.  Browne,  Year,  241  ;  Curzon,  Persia,  ii.  75  £f.  ;  Babelon, 
Manual,  p.  160.  It  is  called  to-day  --  the  Mosque  of  the  Mother  of 
Solomon."  Justi  (in  Geiger  und  Kuhn),  p.  421,  on  its  Asiatic-Greek 
style,  as  found  in  Lycia. 

*  Arrian,  Anab.  v.  29,  4-1 1 ;  Strabo,  730. 


2o6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

But  the  ornament  is  all  foreign — over  his  head  is  a  triple  disk 
as  over  an  Egyptian  god  ;  he  has  wings  like  the  genii  of  Assjnria 
or  Chaldaea,  with  well-marked  feathers  ;  his  robe  has  an 
Assyrian  fringe  ;  in  his  hand  is  a  statuette  in  Egyptian  style. 
A  short  Persian  inscription  states  :  "  I  am  Cyrus  the  King, 
the  Achaemenian."  ^ 

But  for  our  purposes  Darius  is  of  more  importance.  If 
Cjn-us  was  the  conqueror,  it  was  Darius  who  organized  the 
Empire,  who  made  it  formidable  and  significant,  and  gave  it 
such  stability  as  it  kept  for  nearly  two  hundred  years.  It  is 
agreed  among  students  of  antiquity  that  his  extraordinary 
enlightenment,  his  moderation,  his  practical  wisdom,  and  the 
width  of  his  interests  distinguish  him  among  the  conquerors 
and  rulers  of  the  East.  At  Behistun,  on  the  side  of  a  rugged 
crag,  "  of  Gibraltar-like  impressiveness,"  ^  at  a  height  of 
three  hundred  feet  above  the  plain,  there  is  still  to  be  read  the 
inscription,  in  which,  in  about  four  hundred  lines  of  old  Persian 
in  a  beautiful  cuneiform,  Darius  records  how  he  won  his  throne 
and  recaptured  his  Empire,  "  all  by  grace  of  Ahuramazda," 
and  he  mentions  the  provinces  name  by  name. 

"  Saith  Darius  the  King :  When  Ahuramazda  saw  this 
earth  .  .  .  then  did  He  entrust  it  to  me.  He  made  me  King, 
I  am  King,  by  the  grace  of  Ahuramazda  have  I  set  it  in  right 
order,  what  I  commanded  them  that  was  carried  out,  as  was 
my  will.  If  thou  thinkest,  '  How  many  were  the  lands  which 
King  Darius  ruled  ?  '  then  behold  this  picture  ;  they  bear 
my  throne,  thereby  thou  mayst  know  them.  Then  shalt  thou 
know  that  the  spears  of  the  men  of  Persia  reach  afar ;  then 
shalt  thou  know  that  the  Persian  waged  war  far  from  Persia. 

"  Saith  Darius  the  Kine :  What  I  have  done,  that  did  I 
all  by  the  grace  of  Ahuramazda  :  Ahuramazda  vouchsafed  me 
help  till  I  completed  the  work.  May  Ahuramazda  protect 
me  from  .  .  .  and  my  House  and  these  lands !  For  this 
do  I  pray  Ahuramazda  :  may  Ahuramazda  vouchsafe  me 
this! 

1  Babelon;  Manual,  p.  i6o ;  A.  V.  Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  Past 
and  Present,  p.  281. 

»A.  V.  Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  Past  and  Present,  pp.  177-187. 
Englishmen  may  feel  a  legitimate  pride  in  the  fact  that  Sir  Henry 
Rawlinson  first  gave  this  inscription  to  the  world. 


PERSIA  207 

"  O  man !  This  is  Ahuramazda's  command  to  thee : 
Think  no  evil ;  abandon  not  the  right  path  ;  sin  not."  1 

PersepoUs,  forty  miles  south  of  Pasargadae  and  forty 
north  of  Shiraz,  is  the  new  capital  that  Darius  founded  and 
Xerxes  finished.  Five  miles  away  from  the  Takht-i-Jamshid 
and  its  palaces,  cut  into  the  face  of  a  long  high  bluff,  is  the 
grave  of  Darius.  The  carving  on  the  rock  represents  the 
facade  of  an  Achaemenian  palace.  It  is  identified  by  two 
trilingual  inscriptions  of  sixty  lines.  Beside  it  in  the  cliff's 
face  are  the  graves  of  Xerxes  and  two  others  of  the  Kings, 
and  a  little  to  one  side  below  it  is  a  later  monument,  well 
placed — a  finely-rendered  bas-relief  representing  the  surrender 
of  the  Roman  Emperor  Valerian  to  Shapur,  the  Sasanian  king, 
in  A.D.  260,  the  proudest  achievement  of  that  dynasty. 2  It 
remains  for  us  to  see  what  this  king  did — "  Darius  the  great 
King,  the  King  of  kings.  King  of  lands  peopled  by  all  races, 
for  long  King  of  this  great  earth,  the  son  of  Vishtasp,  the 
Achaemenian,  a  Persian,  son  of  a  Persian,  an  Aryan  of  Aryan 
descent." 

The  problem  before  Darius  was  a  difficult  one.  He  had  seen 
the  Empire  fall  to  pieces  in  the  troublous  time  of  Gaumata  the 
Magian  who  lied  to  the  people  and  said,  "  I  am  Bardiya  the 
son  of  Cyrus."  Darius  had  overthrown  the  usurper  and  he 
had  reconquered  the  lost  provinces  ;  but  was  it  possible  to 
keep  them,  to  knit  them  together,  and  to  secure  his  House 
against  the  disruption  of  the  Empire  whenever  a  new  King 
ascended  the  throne — the  common  fate  of  Oriental  monarchies  ? 
The  Empire  reached  far,  and  it  included  civilized  nations  like 
the  Egyptians  and  the  Asiatic  Greeks  and  savages  like  the 
Mossynoeci ;  it  even  touched  India.  Customs,  languages, 
religions,  governments  of  every  kind  it  comprised — a  bewilder- 
ing and  confused  congeries  of  all  sorts  of  races  in  every  stage 
of  culture.  3  What  could  be  done  to  unite  it  ?  Its  variety 
was,  it  is  true,  in  one  way  a  source  of  strength  to  the  Persian 

^  E.  G.  Browne,  Lit.  Hist,  of  Persia,  p.  94. 

2  A.  V.  Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  296-305  ;  Curzon,  Persia,  ii.  120; 
E.  G.  Browne,  Lit.  Hist.  Persia,  p.  151. 

3  Asia  Minor  seems  even  then  to  have  been  what  it  is  to-day — the 
home  of  races,  broken  to  fragments,  and  the  fragments  mixed,  the 
races  too  distinct  and  too  involved  either  to  coalesce  or  to  separate. 


2o8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

rulers,  for  peoples  so  alien  to  each  other  might  be  trusted  never 
to  make  common  cause  against  the  throne  with  any  real 
prospect  of  success  ;  the  distances  were  too  great,^  and  the 
differences  too  vital.  ^  But  there  was  weakness  in  the  variety, 
for  the  Persian  nation  stood  alone  among  its  subjects,  and 
however  well  it  governed,  it  remained  a  foreign  power  to  which 
there  could  be  no  loyalty.  Egypt,  for  instance,  was  well 
governed  under  Darius;  it  had  peace,  and  with  peace,  as 
always  in  Egypt,  when  taxation  is  not  ruinous,  prosperity ; 
but  Egypt  never  liked  the  Persian.  The  Egyptian  did  not 
want  good  government  by  the  foreigner ;  and  the  repeated 
rebellions  of  Egypt  go  far  to  explain  the  ineffectiveness  and 
the  decline  of  Persian  power. 

The  great  work  of  Darius  was  organization.^  The  Empire 
was  divided  into  satrapies,  the  number  of  which  varied  from 
time  to  time.  Over  each  was  a  satrap,  who  with  certain 
limitations  had  a  place  and  a  task  like  that  of  the  King 
himself.  Generally  at  first,  and  later  on  almost  without 
exception,  the  satraps  were  Persians,  and  frequently  men  of 
families  connected  with  the  King's  own.*  Among  the  duties 
of  the  satrap,  the  levying  of  tribute  and  the  forwarding  of  it 
to  the  King  came  first.  Under  Cyrus  and  Cambyses  there 
had  been  no  regular  tribute  ;  now  it  was  organized  on  a 
definite  basis  and  the  satrap  was  responsible.^  Administration 
and  justice  were  in  the  hands  of  the  satrap,  and  by  his  side 
stood  two  independent  officers  of  the  crown,  a  royal  secretary 
and  a  military  commander ;  under  him  there  sometimes 
were  subordinate  governors  (vTrap'^oL).^    At   least,  it  was  so 

1  Cf.  Xen.  Anab.  i.  5,  9. 

"  Meyer,  Gesch.  iii.  §  56,  notes  also  that  Assyrian  conquerors  and  invad- 
ing tribes  (Cimmerians  and  Scythians,  cf.  Herodotus,  i.  6,  15, 105  ;  Strabo, 
627)  by  wearing  down  the  nations  had  made  the  Persian's  task  easier. 

'  Grundy,  Great  Persian  War,  p.  41. 

*  See  notes  of  How  and  Wells  on  Herodotus,  iii.  89  f .  Satraps  and 
satrapies  existed  before  Darius. 

» Note  the  demand  of  Darius  II  for  the  arrears  of  tribute  of  the 
Ionian  cities  as  soon  as  the  Athenian  disaster  at  Syracuse  was  known. 
The  demand  was  sent  to  the  satraps. 

^  The  word  satrap  (khshatrap§,van)  made  its  way  slowly  in  Greek 
literature.  Herodotus  says  virapxos ;  the  satrapy  he  calls  vofi6s, 
only  twice  using  a-arpair-qir),  and  then  explaining  it  by  apx"?-  Aeschylus 
has^neither  term  ;   Thucydides  aarpaTreia,  but   not  o-aTpdirT/s.     Xeno- 


PERSIA  209 

in  theory  ;  for  in  practice  in  a  great  empire  with  no  telegraphs 
many  things  are  done  and  have  to  be  done  which  do  not 
square  with  theory.  It  was  designed  that  satrap  and 
secretary  and  miUtary  commander  should  be  independent 
of  one  another,  even  a  little  hostile  to  one  another,  and  all 
in  consequence  more  loyal  to  the  Great  King  and  more 
dependent  on  him.^  A  similar  plan  was  adopted  by  Louis  XIV 
in  Canada,  where  governor,  bishop,  and  intendant  divided 
responsibility  and  reported  upon  one  another  to  the  King. 
But  practically  everjrthing  that  a  satrap  was  supposed  not 
to  do,  satraps  sooner  or  later  did.  Of  course  it  may  be  that 
the  Greeks  over-systematized  the  arrangements  of  which  they 
learned. 2  Satraps  did  command  armies,  for  they  were 
charged  to  suppress  rebellions,  and  now  and  then  had  to  deal 
with  rebels  without  waiting  for  orders,  and  they  had  at  times 
the  responsibility  of  making  war  on  their  own  account  with 
neighbouring  tribes  or  states. ^  They  also  coined  money, 
which  was  normally  a  royal  prerogative  ;  but  when  a  satrap 
was  in  charge  of  an  army  on  military  service,  he  coined  the 
money  to  pay  it,  and  the  coinages  of  some  of  them  are 
well  known — e.g.  Tissaphernes,  Pharnabazos,  and  Datames.* 
Whether  strict  or  easy,  the  general  scheme  was  for  a  long 
while  effective — as  effective  as  most  plans  of  government ; 
for  the  management  of  the  great  expeditions  against  Greece 
in  the  reigns  of  Darius  and  Xerxes  implies  energy  and  skill 

phon  is  the  first  to  use  a-aTpdirr]!  (as  he  was  to  use  raybs  in  prose),  and 
he  distinguishes  vTrapxos  as  an  of&cial  of  lower  rank  (of.  Anab.  iii. 
5,  17,  and  iv.  4,  4).  The  Greeks  were  not  all  sure  of  the  spelling  of 
the  word — e^aidpdTrrjs  and  i^aiOpairevav  are  variants.  See  Hicks  and 
Hill,  Greek  Inscv.,  No.  133. 

^  Grundy,  Persian  War,  41. 

^  Xenophon,  for  instance;  see  Cyvop.  viii.  6,  1-4;  Econ.  4,  9. 
The  same  is  said  of  Herodotus.  Foreigners  generalize  and  systematize 
what  they  hear,  for  they  are  very  rarely  in  possession  of  the  excep- 
tions that  natives  know.  Tourist  knowledge  of  the  colonies  illustrates 
what  I  mean. 

'  Cf.  expedition  against  Naxos,  Herodotus^  v.  32  ;  and  Herodotus, 
V.  96,  Artaphrenes  and  Athens. 

*  See  Babelon,  Les  Perses  AchSmenides,  p.  xxi  f.     We   often  hear 
of  the  King  supplying  the  money  for  a  war  ;    some  wars,  however, 
must  have  been  financed  by  the  satraps  at  their  own  cost  or  at  the  cost 
of  the  satrapies. 
14 


210  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  organization.  The  expeditions,  it  is  true,  failed,  but 
storms  at  sea  and  the  personal  folly  of  Xerxes  explain  a 
great  deal.  Yet  immense  armies  were  mobilized,  and  trans- 
ported, and  fed,^  and  brought  into  action,  vast  distances 
away  from  their  homelands  ;  and  great  fleets  held  the  sea 
and  co-operated  with  the  armies.  Even  in  the  decline  of 
Persia,  when  the  driving  power  is  supplied,  as  by  Pharnabazos 
and  Conon,  the  machinery  is  all  there,  and  a  great  fleet  can 
take  the  sea  and  win  a  triumphant  and  decisive  victory. 

So  far  as  we  know,  the  satraps  were  paid  no  regular 
stipend,  but  it  is  possible  and  likely  that  in  organizing  the 
tribute  and  its  collection  they  charged  their  upkeep  upon 
their  satrapies.  Eastern  and  western  governors  have  grown 
rich  without  salaries  in  every  age.  Some  satrapies  seem  to 
have  been  practically  hereditary.  Of  these  the  most  interest- 
ing is  that  of  Daskyleion  on  the  Propontis.  Here,  as  a  reward 
for  his  services  to  Xerxes  in  the  great  campaign  that  was 
wrecked  at  Salamis,  Artabazos  the  son  of  Pharnaces  was 
established  ;  ^  and  he  was  succeeded  by  his  son  and  grandson, 
Pharnabazos  and  Pharnaces.^  Of  these  two  men  we  know 
little,  but  we  may  owe  them  a  good  deal  more  than  we  suspect ; 
for  it  generally  held  that  the  family  of  Daskyleion  were  among 
the  Persian  friends  of  Herodotus,  who  was  certainly  remark- 
ably well  informed  about  their  founder.  Pharnaces  was 
succeeded  by  his  son  Pharnabazos,  who  plays  a  large  part 
in  Greek  history  —  an  attractive  figure  in  the  pages  of 
Thucydides  and  especially  of  Xenophon.  Xenophon  yields 
to  natural  affinity  and  delays  his  narrative  to  speak  of  the 
beauties  of  the  satrap's  estate,  his  hunting-grounds  and  his 
paradises,  the  river,  the  birds,  the  villages,  the  abundance ;  * 
and  then  he  tells  in  his  vivid  and  pleasant  way  of  the  dis- 
cussion between  the  great  Persian  noble  and  the  Spartan 
king — ^how  Pharnabazos  reminded  him  what  a  friend  he  had 
been  to  Sparta  through  the  last  years  of  the  Peloponnesian 

1  We  have  certain  slight  hints  of  commissariat  plans — e.g.  Herodotus, 
vii.  23,  25  ;  Xen.  Anab.  i.  5,  6,  the  -•  Lydian  market  "  with  Cyrus' 
troops  ;  cf.  Cyrop.  vi.  2,  38,  39. 

2Thuc.  i.  129. 

3  Thuc.  ii.  67  ;  v.  i  ;  satrap,  430-414  B.C.  He  befriended  the 
Delians  expelled  from  their  island  by  the  Athenians. 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  i,  15  ff. 


PERSIA  211 

War,  and  how  he  had  built  them  fleets ;  and  now  they  have 
ravaged  his  country,  "  and  the  beautiful  buildings  and  the 
paradises  full  of  trees  and  wild  animals  that  my  father  left 
me,  which  I  enjoyed  so  much,  all  these  I  see  cut  down  and 
burnt  down."  Agesilaos  pled  war,  and  with  necessity  (the 
tyrant's  plea)  excused  his  devilish  deeds ;  but  why,  he 
suggested,  should  not  Pharnabazos  revolt  from  the  King  ? 
Phamabazos  replies  that  he  would,  if  the  King  made  him 
subject  to  another  ;  but  if  not,  "  know  assuredly,  I  wUl  fight 
against  you  to  the  best  of  my  power."  So  king  and  satrap 
shake  hands  and  part  friends. 

With  such  a  tenure,  and  with  troops  of  their  own,  particu- 
larly cavalry,  it  was  hard  for  the  King  himself  to  be  rid  of  his 
satraps  ;  and  Herodotus  tells  a  story  which  illustrates  how  care- 
fully the  operation  had  to  be  undertaken,  even  by  so  strong  a 
King  as  Darius.^  But  satraps  were  not  left  quite  to  them- 
selves. There  were  "  King's  Eyes  "  and  "  King's  Ears,"  whose 
functions  are  suggested  by  their  names,  and  who  were  con- 
stantly keeping  the  King  in  touch  with  what  went  on  in  his 
Empire. 2  Whether  he  used  this  information  depended  on 
himself,  and,  in  some  reigns,  on  the  harem.  Aristophanes,  in 
his  Acharnians,  represents  a  certain  Shamartabas,  the  "  King's 
Eye,"  as  coming  on  an  embassy  to  Athens  ;  Dikaiopolis  wishes 
the  crow  would  pick  out  the  "  King's  Eye,"  and  in  the  end  it 
turns  out  that  Shamartabas  is  as  sham  as  his  name.  The  title 
of  the  office  evidently  interested  the  Greeks,  but  it  is  not  clear 
that  such  an  official  would  be  sent  on  an  embassy,  nor  whether 
the  King  had  more  than  one ' '  Eye  "  at  a  time.  ^  That  the  King 
and  his  *'  Eye  "  between  them  insisted  on  honest  justice  so  far 
as  they  could,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  story  of  the  judge  whom 
Cambyses  deposed,  and  whose  skin  covered  the  cushion  on 
which  his  son  and  successor  sat  to  administer  the  law.*    The 

1  Herodotus,  iii.  126-128  ;  Oroites  the  satrap  had  a  bodyguard  of 
1000  Persians. 

2  Xen.  Cyrop.  viii.  2,  10 ;  6, 16.  How  and  Wells  on  Herodotus,  i.  1 14, 
suggest  that  these  officers  did  not  travel  as  much  as  the  Greeks  thought. 
Grundy,  Persian  War,  p.  43,  accepts  Xenophon's  statement. 

3  The  -'  King's  Eye  "  ;  cf.  Herodotus,  i.  114  ;  iii.  126  ;  Plut.  Artax. 
12  ;  Aristophanes,  Ach.  92  ;  and  the  earliest  reference  (Aesch.  Pers.  980) 
seems  to  imply  a  single  --  Eye  "  in  attendance  on  the  King. 

*  Herodotus,  v.  25. 


212  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Empire  was  after  all  a  despotism,  and,  as  the  Royal  Judges 
told  Cambyses,  there  was  a  law  that  the  King  could  do  what 
he  pleased  ;  ^  and  he  did.  The  King's  vengeance  on  traitors, 
real  or  imaginary,  could  be  terrible,  from  the  days  of  Darius  to 
the  end.2  To  secure  the  King  the  quickest  news  and  the 
swiftest  execution  of  his  orders,  the  Persian  posts  were  devised— 
the  quickest  thing  on  e  arth,  Herodotus  says,  and  adds  a  qualifi- 
cation, "  of  mortal  things."  So  also  says  Xenophon  without 
the  qualification.  Marco  Polo  speaks  in  the  same  way  of  posts 
in  the  Chinese  Empire  at  the  time  of  his  residence  there  (about 
1292).^ 

One  feature  of  Oriental  government  has  always  been  the 
steady  accumulation  of  treasure  by  the  ruler,  and  the  Persian 
Kings  were  no  exception.  "  The  Persian,"  says  Xenophon, 
"  considered  that,  if  he  had  endless  money,  he  would  have 
everything  under  his  hand ;  so  all  the  gold  there  was  among 
men,  all  the  silver,  all  the  most  precious  things,  he  tried  to  gather 
for  himself."  *  Herodotus  describes  how  all  the  tribute, 
which  he  computes  to  have  amounted  to  14,560  talents  a  year 
in  the  days  of  Darius,  was  melted  down  and  kept  in  the  form 
of  ingots.  5    The  expenses  of  the  Court  must  have  been  large, 

1  Herodotus,  iii.  31.  ^  Cf .  Herodotus,  iii.  119. 

'  Herodotus,  viii.  98  ;  Xen.  Cyvop.  viii.  6,  17,  18.  Beazley,  Dawn 
of  Modern  Geography,  vol.  iii.  p.  98 :  Polo  says  the  Chinese  post  would 
cover  250  miles  in  a  day  and  nearly  as  much  in  a  night.  From  the 
reminiscences  of  an  old  friend,  writing  of  Bristol  about  1823,  I  take  a 
sentence  or  two  which  may  be  of  interest  by  way  of  illustration. 
-'  About  this  period  coach  travelling  had  been  brought  to  perfection. 
The  fast  coaches  averaged  ten  miles  an  hour,  exclusive  of  stoppages. 
It  required,  at  least,  120  horses  to  work  such  a  coach  between  Bristol 
and  London  .  .  .  kept  in  first-rate  condition,  with  an  unlimited  supply 
of  food — for  the  proprietors  were  well  aware  how  much  dearer  horses 
were  than  hay  and  corn.  .  .  .  Though  the  horses  were  changed  some 
thirteen  or  fourteen  times,  not  more  than  half  an  hour  was  lost  in  these 
frequent  stoppages.  I  have  seen  one  team  taken  out  and  another  put 
to,  in  less  than  a  minut*.  The  horses  had  seldom  more  than  six  hours' 
work  in  a  week  ;  but  at  the  pace  they  were  driven,  it  was  like  fighting, 
and  they  required  prolonged  rest  to  recover  from  the  excessive  strain." 
He  contrasts  an  advertisement  of  a  London  and  Bristol  coach  of  the 
eighteenth  century — "  the  proprietors  solemnly  pledge  themselves,  with 
the  blessing  of  Almighty  God,  to  perform  the  journey  in  the  short  space 
of  three  days  "  (F.  Trestrail,  College  Life  in  Bristol,  p.  in). 

*  Xen.  Ages.  8, 6.         ^  Herodotus,  iii.  95  ;  perhaps  he  quotes  the  total. 


PERSIA  213 

and  the  Persian  King  no  doubt  found  that  what  the  Spartan 
king  says  in  Thucydides  is  true — as  others  have  found  since  to 
their  cost  and  their  children's  after  them — that  war  is  a  matter 
of  finance  as  much  as  of  arms.^  Lysander  took  back  to  Sparta 
after  the  Peloponnesian  War  the  sum  of  470  talents,  which 
Xenophon  describes  as  the  balance  left  of  the  tributes  turned 
over  to  him  by  Cyrus.  ^  Isocrates  says  the  Persian  King 
Darius  II  had  contributed  5000  talents  to  Sparta  in  all.^  He 
also  says  that  the  war  against  Evagoras  cost  Artaxerxes  II  more 
than  15,000  talents,^  which  it  well  may  have,  as  we  gather  in 
fact  from  other  sources  that  the  government  of  Artaxerxes 
had  a  certain  genius  for  waste  and  inefficiency.  ^  None  the  less 
the  hoarding  went  on,  and  when  Alexander  took  Susa,  he 
captured  there  50,000  talents,  and  another  hoard  at  Persepolis.^ 
It  was  not  altogether  an  idle  brag  of  Aristagoras  that,  if  Cleo- 
menestook  Susa,he  might  challenge  Zeus  on  the  scoreof  wealth.' 
George  Finlay  computed  the  treasure  suddenly  thrown  into 
general  circulation  by  Alexander's  conquest  at  between  seventy 
and  eighty  millions  sterling."  The  profound  changes  it  must 
have  made  in  the  Greek  world,  in  all  international  relations 
and  in  morals,  in  everything  down  to  the  cost  of  the  simplest 
articles  in  the  market  of  a  country  town,  it  is  hard  to  grasp  ; 
and  no  doubt  a  great  deal  of  the  treasure  had  never  come  West 
at  all.  Then  the  stream  turned,  and  for  centuries  gold  flowed 
eastward  again,  and  one  of  the  difficulties  of  the  Roman 
Empire  was  the  scarcity  of  the  precious  metals. 

Side  by  side  with  the  satrapies,  or  in  some  cases  within  them, 
there  survived  many  traces  of  older  orders  which  Darius  main- 
tained and  utilized.  Existing  communities  were  in  many  cases 
preserved,  and  often  they  were  allowed  to  govern  themselves 
as  they  preferred,  though  their  liberties  were  precarious  and 
their  cities  unwalled.  The  reversal  of  the  policy  of  setting  up 
tyrants  over  the  Asiatic  Greeks  is  a  case  in  point ;  Mardonius 
put  an  end  to  the  tyrants  and  substituted  democracies.^    Per- 

^  Thuc.  i.  83,  2.  2  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  8-9. 

'  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  97.  *  Isocrates,  Evag.  60. 

^  e.g.  Isocrates,  Paneg.  142  ;  and  Diod.  Sic.  xv.  41. 

•  Arrian,  Anab.  iii.  16,  7  ;   Strabo,  727-730. 

'  Herodotus,  v.  49,  7.      «  Finlay,  Greece  under  the  Romans,  oh.  i.  p.  12. 

'  Herodotus,  vi.  43. 


214  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

haps  it  was  not  really  so  strong  an  indication  of  the  prevalence 
of  democratic  ideas  among  the  Persians  as  Herodotus  supposed, 
but  it  showed  at  least  a  sense  and  a  liberality  that  the  imperial 
states  of  Greece  did  not  reach.     In  Egypt  it  was  the  other  way. 
"  If  Psammenitos  could  have  been  trusted  not  to  make  trouble, 
he  would  have  received  Egypt  again  to  govern  it ;    for  the 
Persians  are  wont  to  honour  the  sons  of  kings  ;  and  even  if  the 
kings  revolt  they  none  the  less  give  back  the  government  to  their 
sons,"  says  Herodotus,^  and  he  instances  the  sons  of  Inaros  and 
Amjnrtaios,  though  no  men  ever  did  the  Persians  more  mis- 
chief than  these  two.     The  Babylonians  seem  to  have  had  the 
same  usage,  to  judge  from  Nebuchadnezzar's  treatment  of  the 
kingdom  of  Judah.     Xerxes  took  with  him  on  his  expedition 
against  Greece  quite  a  number  of  subject  or  vassal  princes  ^ — 
the  kings  or  t5n:ants  (the  latter  name  is  rather  loosely  used)  of 
Tyre  and  Sidon,  of  Cilicia  and  Lycia,^  several  from  Cyprus  and 
Caria,   and  pre-eminent    among   the  last   Queen  Artemisia. 
Xenophon  explains  that  Cyrus  "  sent  no  Persians  to  be  satraps 
of  Cilicia  and  Cyprus  and  the  Paphlagonians,  because  it  ap- 
peared  they  campaigned  with   him   of   their  own   free  will 
against  Babylon  ;    but  he  appointed  that  these  also  should 
pay  tribute."  *    Isocrates,  not  quite  accurately,  says  no  Persian 
was  ever  master  of  Lycia.^ 

It  is  difficult,  sometimes  very  difficult,  for  a  modern  student 
to  be  quite  sure  exactly  how  dependent  or  independent  these 
tributary  kings  and  princes  were  from  time  to  time  ;  perhaps 
it  was  no  easier  for  themselves  to  be  sure.  A  good  deal 
depended  on  geography — how  accessible  the  kingdoms  were  to 
fleets  or  armies,  and  how  far  available  for  the  operations  of 
cavalry  ;  a  good  deal  on  what  we  call  personal  equations — the 
characters  of  the  prince  or  princess  concerned,  of  his  or  her 
brothers  and  other  relatives,^  of  the  neighbouring  satrap,  of  the 

1  Herodotus,  iii.  15. 

2  Cf.  Herodotus,  vii.  98,  195  ;  and  also  v.  104  ;  viii.  11. 

^  A  brilliant  emendation  by  E.  Meyer  may  claim  a  note.  The  text 
reads  Avkios  Kv^epvia-Kos  Si'/ca.  But  Kv^epvis  is  a  Lycian  name  attested 
by  an  inscription,  and  KoaaUas  answers  to  the  Lycian  Cheziga.  So 
Meyer  divides  the  words  accordingly.  ■■  This  is  the  state  of  Keasars 
and  of  Kings  !  " 

*  Xen.  Cyrop.  viii.  6,  8  ;  and  vii.  4,  2,  ^  Isocrates,  Paneg.  161. 

•  Cf.  Strabo,  c.  656,  Pixodaros  and  Ada. 


PERSIA  215 

reigning  Great  King.  But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  if  a  native 
king  could  be  trusted  at  all,  he  might  be  a  much  more  congenial 
ruler  for  his  subjects  than  a  Persian  satrap  would  be  ;  and  it  is 
just  possible  that  the  consciousness  of  a  higher  power  beyond 
might  be  a  check  upon  oppression,  as  is  the  case  in  India  to-day, 
though  no  instance  seems  to  be  recorded  of  the  deposition 
of  a  king  by  the  Persians  on  any  such  ground.  In  any  case, 
some  of  the  countries  or  regions  mentioned  had  native  dynasties 
throughout.  In  Cilicia,  for  instance,  native  kings  are  known  to 
have  reigned  from  before  the  Persian  conquest  down  to  the  fall 
of  the  Empire. 1  Seven  of  them  are  known  to  us  by  name, 
perhaps  eight,  the  most  famous  being  the  third  Syennesis,  who 
fell  gloriously  at  Salamis,  and  the  fourth  Syennesis,  who  with 
the  aid  of  his  wife  and  son  trimmed  very  dexterously  between 
Cyrus  and  Artaxerxes.  Artemisia  of  Caria  and  Halicamassus 
we  have  met  before.  Whether  the  later  Artemisia  who  built 
the  Mausoleum  to  commemorate  her  husband,  and  the  Ada 
who  adopted  Alexander  the  Great  as  her  son,^  are  of  the  same 
family  as  the  great  queen  whom  Xerxes  so  much  admired, 
I  do  not  know. 

Beside  the  satraps  and  the  native  princes,  there  were  here 
and  there  throughout  the  Empire  noble  families  established 
upon  estates  given  them  by  the  Kings,  Cyrus,  Xenophon 
tells  us,  devised  the  plan,  and  "  to  this  day  in  one  land  and 
another  the  descendants  of  those  who  then  received  them 
enjoy  the  property,  though  they  live  themselves  at  the  King's 
court."  ^  Sometimes  a  city  with  its  tribute  was  assigned  to 
a  man  and  his  descendants,  or  a  group  of  villages  to  a  queen.* 
The  most  interesting  grants  of  this  kind,  of  which  we  have 
records,  were  those  made  to  Greek  refugees  or  exiles.  In 
491  B.C.  the  Spartans  deposed  their  King  Demaratos,  and  he 
took  refuge  with  King  Darius,  who  "  received  him  with  great 
honour  and  gave  him  land  and  cities."  ^  Xerxes  took  him 
with  him  on  the  march  to  Greece,  and  Herodotus  tells  of  the 
acute  advice  which  the  exile  gave  the  King  from  time  to 

^  See  list  in  Babelon,  Les  Parses  AcMmenides,  p.  xxiv ;  Syennesis  III 
in  Aesch.  Pers.  327,  and  Herodotus,  vii.  98  ;  Syennesis  IV,  Xen.  Anab. 
i.  2,  and  Diod.  Sic.  xiv.  20. 

^  Arrian,  Anab.  i.  23,  7-8  ;  Strabo,  c.  656. 

*  Cyrop.  viii.  6,  5.       *  Xen.  Anab.  ii.  4,  27.       ^  Herodotus,  vi.  70. 


2i6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

time,  and  how  the  King  himself  defended  him  from  Persian 
criticism.^  No  doubt,  if  the  expedition  had  succeeded,  De- 
maratos  would  have  been  vassal  king  of  Sparta.  Eighty 
years  later  the  descendants  of  Demaratos  meet  us,  bearing  the 
famous  old  Spartan  names  of  Eurysthenes  and  Procles,  and 
still  lords  of  Pergamon,  Teuthrania,  and  Halisarna.  Procles 
"  went  up  "  with  Cyrus,  and  ranked  among  his  Persian  com- 
manders. When  the  Ten  Thousand  started  on  their  weary 
journey  over  the  mountains,  Procles  managed  to  get  back  to 
his  principality  an  easier  way — and  perhaps  made  his  peace, 
as  others  did,  with  Artaxerxes.  He  was  able  to  befriend 
Xenophon  and  the  mercenaries  on  their  reappearance  in  his 
country,  and  lent  aid  to  the  Spartan  commander  Thibron 
against  Tissaphernes — which,  as  we  shall  see,  in  a  loose-hung 
empire  was  not  fighting  against  his  sovereign.^  Here  again, 
as  intheDaskyleionfamily,  the  fullness  and  interest  of  Herodotus' 
information  implies  some  friendship  between  the  historian  and 
the  intervening  generation  or  generations  of  the  exiled  king's 
house.  Xenophon  was  clearly  interested  in  Procles,  who  saved 
his  life  and  entertained  him.  In  the  same  region  and  at  the 
same  time  Xenophon  had  the  friendliest  relations  with  another 
Greek  family  of  well-established  exiles — the  descendants  of 
Gongylos  of  Eretria,  a  less  honourable  ancestorthan  Demaratos.^ 
It  is  perhaps  worthy  of  remark  that  the  towns  of  Gongylos 
and  his  family  were  included  in  the  Athenian  Empire  in  its 
great  days,  and,  when  it  fell,  reverted  to  the  exiles,  as  the 
Ionian  cities  did  to  the  satrap.  Whether  the  Gongylids 
required  the  tribute  they  had  lost  during  Athenian  supremacy 
to  be  made  good,  there  is  no  guessing.  The  most  curious 
instance  of  a  grant  of  revenue  of  this  kind  was  that  made  to 
Themistocles  in  exile,  for  Plutarch  had  among  his  fellow- 
students  at  Athens  another  Themistocles,  a  descendant  of  the 
great  one,  who  was  still  after  five  hundred  years  in  the  en- 
joyment of  the  honours  granted  to  his  ancestor  at  Magnesia.* 

^  Herodotus,  vii.  3,  loi,  209,  235,  237  ;  also  viii.  65. 

2  Procles :  Xen.  Anab.  ii.  i,  3 ;  ii.  2,  i  ;  vii.  8,  17 ;  Hellenica,  iii.  i,  6. 

^  Anab.  vii.  8  ;  Hellenica,  iii.  1,6;  they  held  Myrina,  Gryneion,  and 
one  or  two  more  towns. 

*  Plut.  Them.  32  ;  cf.  Thuc.  i.  138,  5.  Probably  the  later  Themis- 
tocles drew  less  than  the  fifty  talents  a  year  that  the  earlier  one  had 
from  Magnesia. 


PERSIA  217 

The  Persian  Empire  was  not  pre-eminently  a  military 
monarchy,  though  conquest  was  its  base,  and  too  often  re- 
conquest  was  required  of  it.  Its  actual  military  forces  were 
not  for  the  size  of  the  realm  large.  The  vast  masses  of  men, 
marched  against  Greece  by  Xerxes,  were  composed  of  national 
levies  raised  for  the  purpose,  with  every  variety  of  arm  and 
accoutrement,  as  Herodotus  describes  them.^  The  real  core  of 
all  was  the  Persian  army,^  composed  chiefly  of  archers  and 
cavalry.  The  dress  and  weapons  of  the  Persian  archer  are 
described  by  Herodotus,  and  what  he  says  is  confirmed  by 
Persian  monuments,  notably  by  the  Dieulafoy  archer-frieze 
at  Susa.^  The  tiara,  or  soft  cap,  the  embroidered  shirts  with 
sleeves,  the  trousers — especially  the  trousers — are  again  and 
again  noticed.  The  archer  carried  a  light  wooden  or  wicker 
shield  {yippov),  a  short  .  spear, ^  a  stout  bow,  some  thirty 
arrows  in  his  quiver,  and  a  short  knife  or  dagger  in  his  girdle 
on  the  right  side.  He  wore  no  armour.  For  his  long  marches 
and  his  archery  armour  would  have  been  useless.  There  were, 
however,  men  in  armour  in  Xerxes'  troops,^  and  Xenophon 
speaks  of  armoured  horses  ^ — the  familiar  cataphracts  of  the 
wars  of  Roman  and  Sasanian.  Herodotus  represents  Arista- 
goras  as  speaking  with  confidence  at  Sparta  and  again  at 
Athens  of  the  ease  with  which  the  light-armed  troops  of  the 
Persian  King  could  be  defeated.'  He  may  have  spoken  so, 
and  later  days  realized  that  in  hand-to-hand  fighting  the  Persian 
archer,  for  all  his  spirit  and  courage,  was  no  match  for  the 
man  in  armour  ;  ®  but  the  Greeks  generally  were  afraid  of  the 
Persian  army  till  after  Plataea.  At  Plataea  the  value  of  the 
Persian  cavalry  was  felt,^  as  it  was  later  on  in  the  retreat  of 
the  Ten  Thousand  ^°  and  in  the  campaign  of  Agesilaos.^^ 

^  Herodotus,  vii.  61-80. 

^  Herodotus,  ix.  68,  Tvavra  to.  Trptiyfjcara  rmv  ^apjSdpcov  fjprrjTO  ck  Uepcreiov. 

^  See  article  on  Persian  Arms  by  A.  V.  Williams  Jackson  in  Studies 
in  Honour  of  Henry  Drisler. 

*  Rawlinson,  Anc.  Mon.*,  iii.  p.  175,  says  about  6  or  7  ft.  long.  The 
Macedonian  sarissa  was  20  ft.  long. 

'  Herodotus,  viii.  113  ;  ix.  22.  "  Cyrop.  vi.  4,  i. 

'  Herodotus,  v.  49,  97.  ^  Herodotus,  ix.  63. 

®  Herodotus,  ix.  49,  etc> 

^^  Anab.  ii.  2,  7  ;   4,  6  ;  6,  5  ;  iii.  i,  18  ;   3,  19-20 ;  4,  24. 

^^  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  13-15  ;  iv.  i,  3. 


2i8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

The  two  peoples  took  war  in  different  ways.  Mardonius, 
in  the  pages  of  Herodotus, — and  probably  other  Persians  in 
talk  with  the  historian, — pointed  out  the  folly  of  Greek  war- 
fare :  ^  "  they  find  out  the  fairest  and  most  level  place  and 
then  go  down  into  it  and  fight ;  so  that  the  conquerors  come 
off  with  great  disaster — and  I  need  not  speak  of  the  beaten 
party  ;  they  perish."  They  ought  either  to  settle  their  dis- 
putes by  negotiation,  or  do  anything  else  rather  than  fight, 
but  if  they  must  fight  "  then  find  out  where  each  is  hardest  to 
beat  and  try  there."  This  was  the  Greek  tradition,  which  had 
grown  up  in  the  wars  of  neighbouring  cities,  when  the  point 
of  attack  was  always  the  cultivated  land,  "  the  fairest  and  most 
level,"  with  its  olives  and  its  grain.  In  the  Peloponnesian 
War  and  later  the  Greeks  learnt  the  use  of  light-armed.  Cavalry 
of  any  great  value  they  never  had.  The  wars  of  Western  Asia 
— Cilicia  and  Armenia  and  such  regions  excepted — were  fought 
on  great  plains,  where  mobility  counted,  and  the  horseman  and 
the  archer  were  indispensable.  As  a  result  war  on  land 
between  Greek  and  Persian  could  hardly  be  effective,  without 
bad  blunders  on  one  side  or  the  other.  The  Anabasis  shows 
this  plainly.  Nothing  on  the  Persian  side  can  match  the 
Greek  hoplites  ;  wherever  hoplites  can  march  in  square  forma- 
tion, the  Ten  Thousand  can  safely  go.  But  where  cavalry  are 
concerned,  the  Ten  Thousand  are  helpless,  and  take  to  the 
mountains  with  relief  ;  and  there  they  fall  among  light-armed 
enemies,  fight  their  way  through  with  loss,  and  leave  the  moun- 
tains with  relief  as  genuine.  It  was  not  till  Alexander  com- 
bined hoplite,  light-armed,  and  cavalry  that  Persia  really 
broke  down  ;  and  even  then  it  is  said  that  he  owed  his  victories 
to  the  bad  tactics  of  Darius.  Proof  of  this  is  found  in  the 
Parthian  victory  of  Carrhae,  but  there  the  major  faults  were 
on  the  Roman  side.  In  the  expedition  of  Xerxes  the  strength 
of  Persia  lay  in  the  co-operation  of  army  and  fleet — an  idea 
which  the  Spartans  and  other  Peloponnesians  refused  to  take 
in.  It  was  Themistocles  who  recognized  it,  and  to  him  above 
all  the  Greeks  owed  their  victory  and  their  national  existence. 

One  feature  of  Persian  war  must  not  be  quite  overlooked. 
The  employment  of  the  camel  in  war  strikes  the  Western 
oddly,  but  it  won  Cyrus  his  battle  against  Croesus  at  Pterin, 
^  Herodotus,  vii.  9,  2/3.     Cf.  Polybius,  xiii.  3. 


PERSIA  219 

for  "  the  horse  is  afraid  of  the  camel  and  cannot  bear  either 
to  see  its  shape  or  to  smell  it."  So  said  Herodotus.^  "  Twice 
to-day,"  writes  Mr.  Hogarth,  ^  "  we  have  had  to  draw  aside  on 
the  mountain  paths  to  let  long  strings  of  swaying  bearded 
camels  jingle  past.  Strange  how  the  horses  hate  these  familiar 
acquaintances."  I  am  told  the  same  thing  by  a  traveller  in 
China  ;  there  separate  inns  exist  for  those  who  bring  the  one 
animal  or  the  other.  The  camels  carried  mounted  archers." 
Xerxes  had  camels  in  the  army  he  led  against  Greece — the 
first  ever  seen  in  Europe,  and  the  lions  attacked  them  in 
Thrace. 4  Agesilaos  captured  camels,  after  his  cavalry  battle 
near  Sardis  in  395,  and  marched  them  back  to  Greece. ^  One 
would  hardly  have  suspected  the  Spartan  king  of  so  amiable 
a  trait  as  this  interest  in  strange  animals.  "  No  gentleman 
{Ka\b<i  Karya6o<;),"  says  Xenophon,  "  would  wish  to  breed 
camels  to  ride  them,  nor  to  practise  to  fight  on  camel-back"  ^ — 
an  interesting  touch  of  Western  conventionalism. 

The  standing  army  of  Persia  seem.s  never  to  have  been 
very  large  at  any  one  time  or  place.  When  a  large  army  was 
required,  it  took  time  to  organize  and  concentrate.  In 
general,  however,  the  Persian  meant  to  have  a  peaceful  Empire, 
and  never  too  large  a  force  under  one  satrap.  Persia  like 
Rome  understood  this.  Garrisons  were  kept  in  important 
citadels  and  fortresses  all  over  the  Empire,  as  in  Sardis  and 
Babylon,  and  several  Egyptian  centres.'  When  it  was  a 
matter  of  building  or  mobilizing  a  fleet,  Persia  seems  to  have 
had  great  luck  or  great  skill  in  managing  it  with  a  minimum 
of  warning,  but  possibly  her  enemies  knew  more  than  his- 
torians have  told  us.^ 

Darius  stands  out  among  Oriental  rulers  for  his  sym- 
pathetic grasp  of  the  significance  of  peaceful  trade  in  the 
development  of  a  country  or  an  empire.     He  fought  and  crushed 

*  Herodotus,  i.  80  ;  cf.  vii.  87  ;  cf.  Xen.  Cyrop.  vii.  i,  27,  48,  49. 
2  A  Wandering  Scholar  in  the  Levant,  p.  46. 

^  Xen.  Cyrop.  vi.  2,  8. 

*  Herodotus,  vii.  86,  126  ;  cf.  Aristophanes,  Birds,  276. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  4,  24.  '  Xen.  Cyrop.  vii.  i,  49. 

'  Cf.  Xen.  Cyrop.  viii.  6,  3  ;   Oecon.  4,  6. 

^  Cf.  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  i,  the  arrival  of  the  news  of  the  Persian 
fleet  building  in  396.  No  doubt  the  Athenians  knew  about  it  already, 
as  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  i,  seems  to  imply. 


220  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  rebels  within  and  the  disturbing  tribes  without,  and  he 
secured  that  the  satraps  should  be  strong  enough  to  administer 
justice  and  maintain  order,  but  not  so  strong  as  to  be  able  to 
rebel.  Trade  began,  with  peace,  to  follow  its  natural  con- 
nexions. In  Asia  Minor,  for  instance,  the  trade  routes  come 
down  the  three  river  valleys,  through  the  mountain  ranges  that 
cut  off  the  Aegaean  shore  and  its  cities  on  bays  and  headlands 
from  the  Asian  hinterland.^  When  Greece  and  Persia  were 
at  war  these  routes  would  be  little  travelled ;  the  ports 
without  the  trade  that  had  made  them  could  not  thrive, 2  and 
the  cities  declined  in  importance,  as  is  shown  by  the  relatively 
small  tribute  they  paid  to  Athens  as  compared  with  towns  in 
Thrace.  No  doubt,  when  Pericles  made  his  pacification  with 
Persia  in  449,  he  had  trade  in  view.^  After  the  Peace  of 
Antalkidas — betrayal  of  Greece,  as  the  historians  called  it 
and  as  it  really  was  * — prosperity  came  to  the  seaboard  towns — 
to  Ephesus,  for  instance,  and  Halicarnassus.  Greek  influence 
spread  in  Asia  Minor ;  merchants,  adventurers,  and  artists  ^ 
passed  hither  and  thither,  and  above  all  mercenary  soldiers.^ 
This  intercourse  sent  gold  to  Greece,  and  its  value  relative 
to  silver  dropped  from  thirteen  to  one  down  to  twelve  to 
one.' 

One  of  the  curses  of  trade  in  the  early  Mediterranean  world 
was  brigandage,  and  the  Persian  dealt  with  it  sternly.  Of 
Cyrus  the  Younger  as  satrap,  Xenophon  tells  us  that  no  one 

1  See  D.  G.  Hogarth,  Ionia  and  the  East,  pp.  64,  65,  on  the  routes, 
and  p.  48,  on  the  strength  of  the  continental  power  behind  the  moun- 
tains. The  shore  cities  cannot  be  independent  or  European,  unless 
the  Aegean  is  held  by  a  strong  maritime  power. 

2  Zimmern,  Greek  Commonwealth  ^,  p.  368. 

8  Cf.  Thuc.  ii.  69,  Athenian  SkKabes  from  Asia  and  Phoenicia,  and 
viii.  35,  from  Egypt ;  and  the  Oligarch's  Ath.  Rep.  2,  7,  trade  in  Cyprus, 
Egypt,  and  Lydia. 

*  Cf.  Polybius,  vi.  49,  5  ;   Plut.  Artax.  21. 

^  Their  work  survives  in  the  monuments — e.g.  Scopas,  Leochares, 
Timotheos,  and  Bryaxis  were  engaged  on  the  Mausoleum ;  see  Ernest 
Gardner,  Handbook  of  Greek  Sculpture,  pp.  T,y6,  393. 

*  On  this  increasing  intercourse,  and  its  significance  in  preparing  the 
way  for  the  Hellenistic  kingdoms,  Judeich,  Kleinas.  Stud.  pp.  5-7, 
15-17. 

'  Cf.  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  pp.  342-343  ;    Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  v. 


PERSIA  221 

could  say  that  he  allowed  evil-doers  to  laugh  at  him,  but  he 
punished  them  most  unsparingly  ;  one  could  often  see  along 
the  trodden  highways  men  deprived  of  feet  and  hands  and 
eyes  ;  so  that  in  Cyrus'  province  it  was  possible  for  Greek  or 
barbarian,  if  he  did  no  wrong,  to  go  where  he  would  and  take 
with  him  what  might  profit  him.^  Mr.  Williams  Jackson  tells 
us  how  he  came  on  something  of  the  same  kind — the  ferocious 
punishment  of  some  criminal — and  it  was  for  the  same  crime, 
robbery  on  the  high  road.  Iran  hamin  ast,  he  was  told ; 
"  Persia  is  always  the  same."  ^ 

Really  good  roads  are  apparently  a  Roman  invention,  but 
the  great  trunk  roads  of  the  Persian  Empire,  over  which  the 
King's  posts  travelled  faster  than  anything  else  that  was 
mortal,  must  have  been  kept  in  decent  repair.  This  also  con- 
tributed to  the  freedom  and  activity  of  commerce.  ^ 

Another  of  Darius'  great  contributions  to  commerce  was 
the  canal  from  the  Nile  to  the  Red  Sea.  Sethos  I  (between 
1326  and  1300  B.C.)  was  the  first  to  dig  it,  but  it  silted  up. 
Necho  (about  612  B.C.)  began  to  repair  it,  but  gave  it  up  after 
it  had  cost  120,000  lives,*  for  an  oracle  said  he  was  making 
it  for  barbarians.  Darius  dug  it  again.  ^  Archceologists  have 
discovered  the  traces  of  it  and  five  monuments  of  Darius  along 
its  course.  It, was  fifty  yards  wide  and  sixteen  to  seventeen 
feet  deep.  The  monuments  had  each  of  them  inscriptions  in 
Persian,  Median,  and  Assyrian  on  the  one  side,  and  in  Egyptian 
on  the  other  : — "  Darius  the  King  saith  :  *  I  am  a  Persian  ;  a 
Persian  I  govern  Egypt.  I  commanded  to  cut  this  canal  from 
the  Nile,  which  is  the  name  of  the  river  that  runs  in  Egypt  down 
to  the  sea  that  is  connected  with  Persia.  Then  the  canal 
was  cut  here.  I  commanded  this  canal  to  be  made,  and  said. 
Go  from  .  .  .  this  canal  down  to  the  shore  of  the  sea  .  .  . 
Such  is  my  will.'  "     Darius  also,  it  would  appear,  ordered  the 

^Xen.  A  nab.  i.  9,  13. 

^  A.  V.  Williams  Jackson,  Persia,  Past  and  Present,  pp.  272-273. 
Cf.  also  the  story  of  the  4000  mutilated  Greek  captives  who  met  Alex- 
ander at  Persepolis  (Curtius,  v.  5,  6). 

^  Herodotus'  description  of  the  Royal  Road,  v.  52-54. 

*  Very  likely  an  exaggeration. 

^  See  Herodotus,  ii.  158  ;  and  the  notes  of  How  and  Wells  ;  Budge, 
Hist,  of  Egypt,  vol.  vi.  220  ;  Flinders  Petrie,  Hist,  of  Egypt,  vol.  iii. 
366  ;  Authority  and  Archcsology,  p.  84.  * 


222  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

restoration  of  the  schools ;  ^  and  in  one  way  and  another 
Egypt  flourished  under  his  rule. 

Geographical  exploration  seems  to  have  been  one  of  Darius' 
interests  as  it  was  one  of  Alexander's,  and  we  have  records  of 
a  number  of  voyages  and  expeditions  made  under  his  auspices. 
No  one  quite  knows  the  object  of  his  own  Scythian  expedition  ; 
the  gold  mines,  which  one  scholar  supposes  the  King  sought, 
are  rather  remote.  Herodotus  says  that  many  parts  of  Asia 
were  discovered  by  Darius  and  that  he  was  responsible  for  the 
exploring  voyage  made  by  Skylax  of  Caryanda  down  the  Indus 
about  the  year  509.  Skylax,  it  may  be  noted,  was  a  near 
neighbour  of  Herodotus. ^  It  is  likely  that  Herodotus  owed 
his  knowledge  of  India,  limited  as  it  is,  to  this  and  other  ex- 
plorations made  for  the  Persian.  In  Central  Asia,  too,  Darius 
was  in  touch  with  the  Scythians.  Xerxes,  we  are  told,  sent  a 
man  to  circumnavigate  Africa,  who  sailed  some  way  down  the 
Atlantic  coast,  but  preferred  to  come  home  and  be  put  to 
death  ^ — not  for  his  failure  but  for  a  crime  previously  com- 
mitted, which  a  successful  voyage  was  to  have  expiated. 

Another  wise  measure  of  Darius  was  the  issue  of  a  coinage 
of  a  standard  weight  and  a  very  high  purity.  Herodotus  says 
that  the  King  refined  his  gold  to  the  utmost  point  possible, 
and  modern  chemical  analysis  shows  that  the  darics  are  of  a 
gold  with  only  3  per  cent  of  natural  alloy.  ^  The  weight  of 
the  daric  was  normally  8  grammes  42 — a  weight,  one  might 
say,  traditional,  for  it  was  the  Euboic  standard,  and  that  in  its 
turn  came  from  Babylon  by  way  of  Phocaea.  It  had  the 
advantage  too  of  being  the  equivalent  of  20  drachmas.  ^  The 
King  then  takes  as  his  base  the  most  widely  accepted  standard 
in  the  world,  and  mints  coins  of  pure  gold.     The  design  became 

1  Inscription  of  Uzahor-ent-res  ;  cf .  How  and  Wells  on  Herodotus, 
vii.  7. 

2  Herodotus,  iv.  44  ;  Strabo,  c.  100.  If  Alexander  had  read  or  re- 
membered this  chapter,  he  would  not  have  thought  of  identifying 
the  Nile  and  the  Indus,  on  the  score  of  the  crocodiles.  His  actual 
voyage  down  the  Indus  corrected  the  mistake  (Arrian,  vi.  i). 

»  Herodotus,  iv.  43,  voyage  of  Sataspes. 

*  Babelon,  Les  Perses  Achemenides,  pjD.  iv-viii,  on  Persian  darics ; 
G.  F.  Hill,  Handbook  of  Greek  and  Latin  Coins,  pp.  13,  30. 

5  Xen.  Anah.  i.  7,  18:  Cyrus  promises  a  soothsayer  10  talents 
(=60,000  drachmas)  and  pays  him  3000  darics. 


PERSIA  223 

familiar  to  all  mankind — the  Persian  King  with  his  cidaris 
erect  on  his  head,  kneeling  and  holding  a  bow.  This  remained 
practically  unchanged  from  Darius  I  to  Darius  III.  Every- 
body knew  it  and  it  was  current  everywhere — as  the  Attic 
drachma  was  and  for  the  same  reasons,  the  familiar  look,  the 
known  weight,  and  the  pure- metal. ^  When  Agesilaos  said  he 
had  been  driven  out  of  Asia  by  30,000  archers,  he  did  not 
need  to  explain  his  joke.^ 

We  may  perhaps  add  that  Persian  scholars  hold  that 
Darius  reformed  the  calendar  in  a  Zoroastrian  direction,  and 
established  the  solar  year,  with  twelve  months  of  thirty  days, 
and  five  extra  days,  called  the  gdthds.  In  this  connexion  it 
is  worth  while  to  remember  that  a  similar  scientific  reform 
of  the  year  was  one  of  Julius  Caesar's  first  acts  as  dictator, 
and  to  contrast  the  difficulties  involved  by  the  short  Muham- 
madan  year  of  lunar  months  without  intercalation.' 

In  ail,  it  may  be  said,  the  contributions  of  Darius  to  trade 
and  commerce  are  very  striking.  He  understood  and  he 
acted.  It  may  be  urged  that  the  hoarding  of  gold  by  the  King 
withdrew  it  from  circulation,  and  so  far  told  against  trade, 
but  this  does  not  outweigh  the  substantial  benefits  he 
conferred  on  all  the  trading  communities  of  the  eastern 
Mediterranean. 

One  indication  of  the  success  of  his  work  is  the  appearance 

1  Cf.  Hopot,  3,  2.  2  piut.  Artax.  20. 

'  See  J.  H.  Moulton,  Early  Zoroasfnanism,  p.  48  ;  and  E.  G.  Browne, 
Lii.  Hist,  of  Persia,  p.  100.  The  Zoroastrian  year  is  remarkable  in 
ignoring  the  week.  The  twelve  months  are  named  after  the  twelve 
archangels,  while  the  same  twelve  archangels  plus  eighteen  other  angels 
give  each  his  name  to  one  of  the  thirty  days  of  the  month.  Muhammad 
found  among  the  Arabs  a  system  of  intercalation  which  (as  in  Rome) 
was  abused  for  the  ends  of  faction.  He  forbade  all  intercalations  in 
consequence.  As  the  Moslem  year  (354  days)  is  less  than  a  true  solar 
year,  Ramadan  retrogrades  through  all  the  seasons  in  a  period  of  about 
33i  years,  to  the  great  discomfort  of  those  who  have  to  fast  through 
long  summer  days.  All  chronology  is  complicated  in  the  most  dreadful 
way  by  this  use  of  a  year  which  is  not  a  year.  See  Lane,  Modern 
Egyptians,  ch.  ix.  The  Babis  revived  the  solar  year  in  the  form  of 
19  months  of  19  days  (=361  days)  plus  5  days  (or  as  many  as  were 
required).  Nineteen  is  the  numerical  value  of  Wahid  (the  symbol 
One  used  for  God),  and  5  of  Bdb.  The  Bab  aimed  at  basing  all 
possible  numeration  on  19.     Cf.  Chapter  I.  p.  30. 


224  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  a  class  of  people,  whom  the  Greeks  called  "_  two-tongued  "  ^ 
— interpreters  and  the  like — perhaps  predominantly  Asiatic, 
for  the  Greek  was  rather  noticeably  a  bad  linguist.  Herodotus 
spoke  no  Egyptian  and  no  Persian,  and  Plutarch  could  make  a 
schoolboy  blunder  with  a  Latin  preposition  {sine  patris).  It 
has  indeed  been  suggested  that  in  Aristophanes'  day  "  Persian 
was  as  familiar  to  the  Athenians  as  French  was  to  Englishmen 
in  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth,"  but  the  statement  seems 
overbold.^  Negotiations,  such  as  that  of  Callias  at  Susa  in 
449,  imply  interpreters,  and  Athens  had  in  424  men  capable 
of  "  rewriting  a  dispatch  out  of  the  Assyrian  letters  "  and 
understanding  it.^  The  most  curious  instance  known  to  me 
of  the  bilingual  is  Phamuches,  a  Lycian  in  Alexander's  army, 
who  could  speak  the  language  of  the  Asiatic  Scythians  and 
was  very  expert  at  it.*  Such  men  are  naturally  only  mentioned 
here  and  there,  as  occasion  requires,  but  they  represent  a 
steady  intermingling  of  races. 

In  the  period  with  which  this  book  deals  Persia  is  already 
in  decline,  and  that  decline  we  have  now  to  consider.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  it  began  with  the  disastrous  issue  of 
Xerxes'  splendid  expedition.  The  Persian  had  been  unlucky 
in  Europe — Darius  among  the  Scythians,  Mardonius  in  Thrace, 
Datis  at  Marathon — and  things  could  not  be  left  so.  To 
abandon  all  claims  of  sovereignty  over  these  rather  insignificant 
European  peoples — the  uncivilized  Scythians  and  the  numeric- 
ally weak  city  states  of  the  European  Greeks — was  to  invite 
disorder  in  Asia,^  and  above  all  in  Egypt.  Marathon  had  been 
the  most  signal  failure,  and  before  it  could  be  avenged  Egypt 
was  in  rebellion.®  Three  years  passed  before  Egjrpt  was 
reduced,  and  (says  Herodotus)  more  enslaved  than  it  had 
been  under  Darius.  The  Egyptologists  tell  us  that  there  are 
no  foundations  of  Xerxes  or  Artaxerxes  I  in  Egjrpt.  Then 
came  the  crowning  shame  and  surprise  of  Xerxes'  expedition, 

*  Thuc.  viii.  85,  Kapa  StyXwo-o-ov. 

2  Starkie  on  Aristophanes,  Ach.  100.  The  evidence  he  cites,  viz. : 
the  trick  of  Iphicrates  (Polyaenus,  iii.  9,  59),  though  the  general  employed 
men  acquainted  with  Persian,  rather  implies  that  the  public  on  whom 
the  trick  was  played  were  shaky  in  the  language.  There  is  no  evidence, 
I  think,  that  Persian  literature  had  any  influence  on  Athenian. 

^  Thuc.  iv.  50.  *  Arrian,  Anab.  iv.  3,  7. 

'  Cf.  Aesch.  Pers.  586.  •  Herodotus,  vii.  i ;  7. 


PERSIA  225 

which  everybody  had  expected  to  be  invincible.^  It  was 
followed  by  the  rapid  rise  of  the  victorious  Athenian  con- 
federacy. One  naval  disaster  came  after  another,  and  then 
in  the  middle  of  the  century  fresh  trouble  in  Egypt  (460-454) 
and  rebellion  in  Cyprus.  The  meddlesome  Athenians,  how- 
ever, burnt  their  fingers  in  Egypt  ^ — far  more  severely  than  we 
generally  realize,  Cimon  the  war-spirit  fell,  off  Cyprus  (449), 
and  Pericles  began  to  revert  to  the  old  view  of  Themistocles, 
that  eternal  war  with  the  Persian  was  nonsense.  Both  he 
and  King  Artaxerxes  were  inclined  for  peace — the  latter 
"  conspicuous  above  Persian  Kings  for  gentleness  and  high- 
mindedness,"  ^  or,  in  plainer  language,  inertia.  Callias  went 
to  Susa,  then,  in  449-448,  and  managed  to  negotiate,  not 
exactly  a  peace,  but  an  agreement,  a  pacification.*  The  King 
undertook  not  to  send  a  fleet  west  of  Phaselis,  and  the 
Athenians  to  leave  his  subjects  alone — those  in  Egypt  and 
Cyprus.  The  Asiatic  Greeks  were  in  the  Athenian  con- 
federacy, and  were  free  of  Persian  rule.  The  Persian,  how- 
ever, considered  tribute  as  still  due  from  them — autonomy 
and  tribute  the  Persian  thought  not  incompatible.  ^  Autonomy 
is  the  most  abused  word  of  this  period.  The  tribute  to  Persia 
was  not  paid  by  the  Greeks  of  Asia ;  but  it  was  not  forgotten, 
and  the  day  came  when  it  was  claimed. 

This  was  when  the  power  of  Athens  was  broken  in  the 
harbour  of  Syracuse  (413).  The  Spartans  from  the  beginning 
of  the  Peloponnesian  War  had  been  sending  ambassadors 
to  Susa,  but  either  they  did  not  get  through,*  or  they  were 
"  indistinct,"  '  or  Persia  did  not  believe  that  Sparta  could 
do  anything  against  the  Athenian  naval  power  (judging  very 
rightly),  and  was  therefore  indisposed  to  pick  a  needless  and 
troublesome  quarrel.  Athens  also  sent  embassies  (if  we  may 
trust  Aristophanes  ^)   who  travelled  with  incredible  comfort 

^  Herodotus,  vii.  138  ;  Diod.  Sic.  xii.  i  ;  Meyer,  Gesch.  iii.  §  211. 

^Thuc.  i.  104-110.  3  Plut.  Artax.  i. 

*  The  fact  of  the  embassy,  Herodotus,  vii.  151  ;  the  bargain,  Thuc. 
viii.  56  (an  allusion)  ;  details  (perhaps  rather  brightened)  in  Isocrates, 
Paneg.  118;  Aveop.  80,  etc.,  and  fourth-century  orators;  Diod.  Sic. 
xii.  4. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  25.     Cf.  also  iv.  8,  i. 

®  Thuc.  ii.  67.  '  Thuc.  iv.  50. 

^  Ach.  64 ;  the  embassy  left  in  430  and  got  back  in  425,  we  are  told  ! 
15 


226  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

at  the  highest  salaries  and  stayed  away  for  years  on  end, 
and  then  returned  with  sham  "  Eyes."  But  Syracuse 
harbour  altered  every  international  relation  in  the  world, 
and  the  King  began  by  claiming  his  arrears  of  seventy  years 
of  tribute.^  The  Spartans  again  started  negotiations — this 
time  with  Tissaphernes — on  the  basis  of  the  abandonment 
of  the  Asiatic  Greeks.  Three  drafts  of  their  treaty  of  Miletus 
are  quoted  by  Thucydides,^  the  first  so  scandalously  drawn 
as  to  cede  to  the  King  all  territory  or  cities  he  or  his  ancestors 
had  ever  occupied — which,  as  the  Spartan  Lichas  said,  would 
give  him  Thessaly  and  Boeotia  ^ — more,  one  may  imagine, 
than  either  party  expected  or  wished.  The  third  confines 
the  concessions  to  Asia,  which  was  considerable  enough. 
Meanwhile  a  Phoenician  fleet  was  built,  or  at  any  rate 
launched — for  what  purpose  the  Greeks  were  not  clear;  it 
might  be  to  help  the  Spartans,  or,  if  Alcibiades  prevailed,  to 
help  the  Athenians,  or  neither.  In  any  case,  Persia  was  in 
the  ascendant,  and  her  Western  policy  was  being  guided  a 
great  deal  by  Tissaphernes,  who  was  a  recognized  enemy  of 
the  Greeks,*  cunning,  crooked,  and  unscrupulous. 

At  this  point  Alcibiades  comes  into  the  story,  with  the 
famous  advice  he  gave  to  Tissaphernes.  No  doubt  it  was 
not  from  Tissaphernes  that  Thucydides  learnt  of  it.  Herodotus 
tells  us  of  counsel  given  by  Demaratos  to  Xerxes,  while  the 
succession  to  Darius  was  still  undecided,  but  he  thinks  that 
even  without  the  counsel  Xerxes  would  have  been  King.^ 
Tissaphernes,  we  may  believe,  listened  to  the  brilliant  Greek, 
and  took  his  own  shifty  course.  The  advice  was  sound  ^ — 
not  to  be  in  a  hurry  to  end  the  Peloponnesian  War,  but,  with 
a  minimum  of  expense  and  complete  safety  for  himself,  to 
allow  the  two  chief  Greek  powers  to  wear  each  other  out ; 
in  any  case,  not  to  let  the  same  Greek  state  control  both  sea 
and  land,  but  to  secure  that  empire  in  the  Greek  world  was 
divided,  to  keep  a  fairly  even  balance  between  them — one 
of  them  always  available  for  the  King's  purposes  and  ready 
to  thwart  and  injure  the  other,    Thucydides  says  that,  to 

1  Thuc.  viii.  5.  ^  Thuc.  viii.  18,  ^7,  58.  »  Thuc,  viii.  43.  3. 

*  Plut.  Alcib.  24,  t2XX'  ovv  S)v  koi  fxicreXXrjv  iv  Tois  fiaKLcrra  Tlepaav. 
^  Herodotus,  vii.  3. 
8  Thuc.  viii.  46.     Cf.  complaint  of  Isocrates,  Paneg.  121. 


PERSIA  227 

judge  from  his  conduct,  Tissaphernes  took  the  advice  ;  he 
certainly  shilly-shallied.^  He  had  been  angry  with  Lichas 
already,^  and  perhaps  he  had  the  weakness  that  often  goes 
with  cunning,  indecision ;  and  now  he  tried  the  plan  of 
balancing,  which  gained  him  time,  and  was  perhaps  as  bad 
for  the  Greeks  as  anything  else  he  could  try. 

Pharnabazos  in  the  north  threw  himself  more  unreservedly 
on  the  Spartan  side.  When  the  news  of  Sicily  reached  the 
world,  he  had  asked  Spartan  aid  for  himself,  and  it  might 
well  have  been  the  wiser  plan  for  Sparta  to  send  it  to  him 
before  Tissaphernes.  If  with  Spartan  troops  and  ships  Pharna- 
bazos could  have  secured  the  cities  on  the  Bosporus  and  the 
Hellespont — the  wheat-route,  the  end  of  the  war  might  have 
come  ten  years  sooner,  and  with  much  less  loss  of  life  and 
general  ruin.  But  Tissaphernes  was  of  higher  rank,  as 
a-TpaT7]<yo<i  r&v  Karto,^  and  Sparta  preferred  him  and  got 
what  she  deserved. 

In  the  spring  of  408  the  whole  situation  was  fundamentally 
changed.  In  May,  Alcibiades  sailed  into  the  Peiraieus,  return- 
ing after  seven  years  of  exile  the  hero  of  the  Athenian  fleet, 
winner  of  brilliant  victories,  and  the  hope  of  his  country.  He 
stayed  a  while  in  Athens,  and  then  returned  to  the  fleet  to 
meet  with  a  great  surprise.  Ambassadors  sent  up  with  Phar- 
nabazos to  the  King  had  not  returned ;  they  had  never  reached 
the  King  at  all ;  they  had  been  arrested  and  detained  by  the 
young  prince,  Cyrus,  on  his  way  down  to  the  coast  as  karanos,^ 
commander-in-chief  of  the  Persian  armies  of  Western  Asia 
Minor.  Tissaphernes  was  in  the  background,  a  rather  dis- 
credited figure.  Cyrus  lives  in  the  portrait  Xenophon  drew 
of  him — a  splendid  vigorous  personality,  a  lover  of  horses  and 
hunting,  generous  and  effective,  a  born  leader  of  men.^  He 
was  young  and  ambitious,  and  he  liked  neither  Tissaphernes 
nor  his  hedging  policy,  and  swept  both  aside.  He  took  to 
the  Spartan  Lysander  immensely,  for  Lysander,  sinister  and 

1  Thuc.  viii.  46  ;  57.  2  Thuc.  viii.  43  ;   cf.  52. 

3  Thuc.  viii.  5.     The  equivalent  of  Kdpavos  in  the  next  paragraph. 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  4,  3.  A  letter  with  the  royal  seal,  toIs  Kara  iraa-i, 
announcing,  KaTaneinTW  Kvpov  napavov  rau  els  KacTTcoXov  ddpoi^Ofievcov.  Cf. 
Anab.  i.  1,2,  aaTpdnrjv  inoirjae  /cat  OTpaTr^yov  8e, 

^  Xen.  Anab.  i.  9  ;  Plut.  Artax.  2.     See  also  Grote,  viii.  350. 


228  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

false  as  he  might  be,  was  a  man  of  action  and  energy;  and 
energy  appealed  to  Cyrus.  And  it  is  possible,  when  one  looks 
at  what  followed,  to  surmise  that  the  young  prince  was  already 
nursing  plans  of  his  own,  which  could  be  helped  forward  by  a 
victorious  and  friendly  Sparta,  under  the  guidance  of  a  man 
like  Lysander.  At  all  events,  Cyrus  threw  himself  on  the 
Spartan  side  with  emphasis — he  had  instructions  to  do  so  from 
his  father,  he  said,  who  had  assigned  500  talents  for  the  war  ; 
if  it  was  not  enough,  he  would  spend  his  own,  even  if  it  came 
to  coining  the  throne  of  silver  and  gold  on  which  he  sat.^ 
He  was  as  good  as  his  word,  and  Persian  gold  carried  Sparta  to 
a  complete  victory.  The  Athenian  Empire  fell,  and  the  Asiatic 
Greeks  were  never  to  be  free  again.  The  victory  of  the  Spartans 
was  the  triumph  of  Persia — what  she  had  lost  at  Salamis,  she 
regained  at  Aegospotami.  The  King  was  supreme  in  Asia 
and  arbiter  of  Europe. 

In  the  hour  of  triumph  came  the  reversal — the  peripeteia, 
as  the  Greeks  called  it — as  impressive  and  as  dramatic  as 
anything  in  a  Greek  tragedy. 

No  Agamemnon,  king  of  men,  ever  occupied  such  a  position 
as  that  of  the  Persian  King.  "  A  great  god  is  Ahuramazda," 
runs  the  inscription  of  Xerxes,  "  who  hath  created  the  earth, 
who  hath  created  the  heavens,  who  hath  created  man,  who 
hath  given  to  mankind  the  good  spirit  (life), 2  who  hath  made 
Xerxes  King,  the  sole  King  of  many  kings,  the  sole  Lord  of 
many  lords.  I  am  Xerxes  the  Great  King,  the  King  of  kings,  ^ 
the  King  of  many-tongued  countries,  the  King  of  this  great 
universe,  the  son  of  Darius,  the  King,  the  Achaemenian."  He 
stood  above  all  law — the  supreme  law  said  that  the  King  could 
do  what  he  pleased.*  The  greatest  nobles  of  Persia  waited  at 
his  gates  for  his  bidding,  whatever  it  might  be  ;  ^  they  vowed 
loyalty  to  him,^  they  were  taught  to  put  his  name  in  their 
prayers,'  they  were  ready  (so  the  Greeks  said,  and  it  can 
hardly  be  exaggeration)  to  lighten  the  ship  for  him  in  the 

1  'Xen.,  Hellenic  a,  i,  5,  3. 

2  The  reader  will  notice  a  change  of  translation  here  from  the  similar 
inscription  of  Darius.     This  is  quoted  from  Curzon,  Persia,  ii.  p.  156. 

8  This  title  had  not  been  used  by  Assyi-ian  or  Babylonian 
(Meyer,  Gesch.  iii.  §  13).  *  Herodotus,  iii.  31. 

^  Xen.  Cyrop.  viii.  1.6.  *  Xen.  Cyrop.  viii.  5,  27. 

'  Herodotus,  i.  132. 


PERSIA  329 

storm  by  jumping  into  the  sea.^  Aeschylus  repeatedly  calls 
the  King  the  god  of  the  Persians — Queen  Atossa  is  spouse  of 
god  and  mother  of  god  ^ — though  this  language  was  not  actually 
held  by  the  Persians  themselves.  The  King's  unique  position 
was  marked  out  by  his  splendid  Median  dress,  ^  and  above  all 
by  his  turban,  which  he  alone  of  men  wore  erect.*  Whoever 
entered  his  presence,  prostrated  himself  to  the  ground ;  ^ 
where  he  passed,  men  stood  with  their  hands  in  their  sleeves, 
on  pain  of  death.  ^  In  war  and  peace  he  was  the  one  arbiter 
of  life  and  death  for  every  man  and  woman  in  his  realm — his 
son,  his  slave,  his  wife — his  subjects,  his  nobles,  his  armies — 
over  all  persons  and  in  all  causes  within  his  dominions 
supreme.'  All  power,  all  authority  rested  upon  him,  and  all 
responsibility. 

The  Persian  Empire  had  been  made  by  a  great  personaUty, 
and  the  whole  system  was  organized  in  such  a  way  that  it 
depended  in  the  last  resort  on  the  character  of  the  King. 
"  The  greatness  of  the  kingdom,"  said  the  friends  of  the 
younger  Cjnrus,  "  needed  a  King  of  spirit  and  ambition,"  and 
they  were  right.  But  Nature  denied  such  men  to  the  house — 
her  revenge,  one  might  say,  for  the  harem  system  of  queens 
and  concubines  and  eunuchs.^  There  was  generally  one  chief 
queen, 9  before  whom  all  the  members  of  the  harem  had  to 
prostrate  themselves  ;  i"  but  it  did  not  necessarily  follow  that 
her  son  sat  on  the  throne. ^^  The  succession  depended  on  the 
outcome  of  the  most  complicated  tangle  of  plots  and  intrigues, 

^  Herodotus,  viii.  ii8,  119. 

^Aesch.  Pers.  157,  644;  Atossa  was  in  turn  the  wife  of  Cambyses, 
the  false  Smerdis,  and  Darius. 

^  Xen.  Cyvop.  viii.  i,  40;  3,  i.  Ear-rings  found  in  tomb  of  Cyrus, 
see  Arrian,  Anab.  vi.  29. 

*  Aristophanes,  Birds,  486  ;  Xen.  Anab.  ii.  5,  23  ;  Pint.  Ariax.  26-28. 
^  Plut.  Artax.  22  ;    Them.  28. 

*  Hands  in  sleeves,  Cyrop.  viii.  3,  10  ;  Hellenica,  ii.  i,  8. 

^  Plut.  Artax.  23.  Cf.  Xen.  Anab.  ii.  5,  38,  reference  of  the  King's 
envoys  to  •'  Cyrus  his  slave." 

^  On  this,  Plut.  Them.  26. 

'  e.g.  Atossa,  Amestris,  Parysatis,  the  queens  of  Darius  I,  Xerxes  I, 
and  Darius  II. 

^"  So  Deinon,  ap.  Athen.  xiii.  p.  5  5  6b. 

^^  Cf.  Herodotus,  vii.  2  ;  Xen.  Anab.  i.  1,4.  See  also  Isocrates, 
Nicocles,  41,  42,  on  effects  of  harem  system. 


230  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

through  which  no  one  could  safely  count  on  picking  his  way. 
Xerxes,  it  is  said,  was  murdered  by  the  man  whom  he  had 
delegated  to  murder  his  own  son,  the  Prince  Darius ;  ^  and 
Xerxes  was  not  the  only  Achaemenian  King  to  be  murdered 
at  home.  The  savagery  and  cunning  of  the  queens  stand 
out  in  the  horrible  story  of  the  palace.  The  King,  distracted 
with  duties  and  pleasures,^  the  victim  of  his  own  fancies,  and 
only  too  conscious  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  lived,  could 
only  protect  himself  in  one  way — a  clumsy  way.  "  He  sus- 
pected all  the  chief  men ;  many  he  killed  in  anger,  more  from 
fear  :  for  cowardice  in  tjnrannies  is  the  most  murderous  thing."  ^ 
The  old  Persian  practice  of  bringing  children  up  "  to  speak  the 
truth  "  was  as  absurd  in  a  harem  as  it  was  impossible.  Arta- 
xerxes  I,  Darius  II,  and  Artaxerxes  II  were  not  men  of  strong 
character,  and  for  a  century  Persia  was  ruled  by  weaklings, 
and  the  Empire  felt  the  effects. 

The  reflex  from  this  political  system  Isocrates  sketches 
for  us,  in  more  than  usually  philosophic  mood,  and  he  does 
not  go  beyond  what  we  learn  elsewhere  independently  of  his 
evidence.^  It  is  "  not  in  their  institutions  "  to  make  a  great 
general  or  a  good  soldier — how  could  a  man  be  either  who  is 
"  better  trained  to  slavery  than  our  house-servants  "  ?  There 
is  none  of  the  real  training  of  political  life  or  freedom.  Luxury 
and  monarchy  make  cowards  of  them  all — they  are  unmanly 
and  protect  themselves  by  cunning  and  treachery.  They  are 
forced  to  prostrate  themselves  before  a  mortal  man,  to  think 
meanly  of  themselves  ;  and  the  outcome  is  overweening 
tyranny  that  alternates  with  grovelling  falsity.  And  he  turns 
to  the  records  of  Agesilaos'  campaign  to  prove  what  he  says. 
There  is  much  else  that  confirms  him. 

^  Diod.  Sic.  xi.  69. 

^  The  luxury  of  the  Persian  court  is  constantly  emphasized  by  the 
Greeks ;  for  the  comment  of  Alexander  upon  it  and  its  influence  on  him, 
see  Plut.  Alex.  20 ;  Arrian,  Anah.  iv.  9,  9  ;  vii.  6,  2.  The  transport 
of  specially  boiled  water  from  the  Choaspes,  wherever  the  King 
went,  was  probably  not  luxury,  but  symbol  or  tabu.  See  Herodotus, 
i.  188. 

»  Plut.  Artax.  25. 

•Isocrates,  Paneg.  150-153.  Cf.  the  life  of  Datames  written  by 
Cornelius  Nepos — the  story  of  a  man  of  spirit  who  has  to  take  to 
treachery  to  save  himself,  and  is  at  last  destroyed  by  treachery. 


PERSIA  231 

Out  of  this  chaos  of  muddle  and  intrigue  there  suddenly 
emerges,  as  we  have  seen,  the  attractive  figure  of  the  younger 
C5n:us.  Whatever  time  might  have  made  of  him,  had  he 
become  King,  he  had  gifts  of  nature  that  charmed  the  Greeks. 
He  was  a  personality  at  last.  His  military  ability,  too,  is 
warmly  emphasized  by  Colonel  Arthur  Boucher,  after  a  close 
study  of  his  strategy  on  the  great  expedition. ^  And  it  was 
Cyrus  who  in  truth  dealt  the  fatal  blow  to  the  Empire  of  his 
fathers.  It  was  not  that  he  intrigued  and  rebelled,  but  that 
he  marched  a  body  of  13,000  Greeks  right  into  the  heart  of 
the  kingdom,  and  with  their  aid  ignominiously  defeated  the 
Great  King  in  battle.  Cyrus  fell,  but  his  Greek  troops  fought 
their  way  to  the  sea  and  got  back  to  Greece.  They  brought 
with  them  a  new  knowledge  of  what  the  Persian  Empire  had 
become  ;  and  the  knowledge  was  fatal.  ^ 

The  Ten  Thousand  could  tell  their  countrymen  of  an 
Empire  where  government  had  broken  down.  They  had  been 
enlisted,  some  of  them,  to  help  the  prince  Cyrus  to  make  war 
on  another  of  his  brother's  satraps — his  mother,  they  learnt, 
approved,  and  the  Great  King  was  well  content  to  see  his 
governors  waging  civil  war  in  his  domains.^  They  had  marched 
with  Cyrus  for  hundreds  of  miles,  practically  unopposed — a 
Persian  governor,  it  appeared,  could  levy  troops  and  march 
from  the  Aegaean  to  the  Orontes,  if  he  chose,  to  avenge  an 
injury  on  a  fellow-satrap  (Abrokomas  ^) ,  and  no  one  would 
stop  him.  They  had  travelled  through  kingdoms  whose 
loyalty  to  the  King  was  patently  of  the  slightest— Syennesis 
was  king  of  Cilicia,  whichever  brother  was  Great  King.  They 
found  Mysians,  Pisidians,  and  Lycaonians,  prosperous  and 
independent,  in  Asia  Minor  itself. ^  They  had  heard — the 
Greeks  had  read  it  in  Herodotus — of  three  satrapies  on  the 
Caspian  Sea  ;  ^  what  they  found  was  a  mountain  region  full  of 
savage  tribes,  far  more  dangerous  than  the  royal  troops,  and 

1  L'Anabase  de  XSnophon,  pp.  86-88.     See  Chapter  VIII.  p.  246. 

*  Isocrates,  Paneg.  138-149 ;  adding  with  a  sting,  ^'more  safely  than 
the  ambassadors  who  went  up  to  the  King  to  treat  for  friendship." 
Cf.  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  4,  4-7  ;  Poly  bins,  iii.  6,  9-13. 

3  Xen.  Anab.  i.  i,  8. 

*  Xen.  Anab.  i.  3,  20. 

^  Xen.  Anab.  iii.  2,  23  ;  cf.  ii.  5,  13. 

*  See  Maspero,  Passing  of  Empires,  p.  774  ;  Herodotus,  iii.  94. 


233  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

none  with  the  least  regard  for  the  Great  King  ;  ^  nay,  the 
King  had  to  pay  the  Mardians  and  other  robber  tribes  toll  to 
reach  his  summer  palace  in  Ecbatana  ;  ^  and  before  long 
Greece  had  their  story  confirmed  by  rumours  of  the  disastrous 
failure  of  Artaxerxes  to  reduce  the  Cadusii.^  When  they 
reached  the  Euxine  and  travelled  along  the  North  of  Asia 
Minor,  they  found  the  Paphlagonians  a  strong  military  nation, 
proud  of  their  cavalry  and  independent  of  the  King  ;  *  the 
Bithynians  also  independent ;  and  a  number  of  Greek  towns, 
such  as  Herakleia,  independent  too. 

All  this  they  told  the  Greek  world,  and  it  was  true.  Had 
they  not  marched  where  they  would,  defeated  the  Great  King 
in  drawn  battle — "  beaten  him  at  his  doors,  laughed  and  come 
away  "  ^ — defied  alike  the  cavalry  of  his  satraps  and  the 
ambushes  of  the  mountaineers — demonstrated  in  short  that 
there  were  no  troops  like  Greek  hoplites — demonstrated,  too, 
that  the  Persians  themselves  knew  it  and  avowed  it  ?  Why 
had  Cyrus  chosen  to  depend  on  Greek  troops  ?  What  did  it 
mean  that,  now  his  rebellion  was  over,  the  satraps  were 
beginning  freely  to  engage  Greek  mercenaries  ?  ^  Was  it  to 
fight  one  another,  or  to  fight  their  sovereign  ?  Again,  look 
at  the  naval  and  military  power  of  Evagoras  in  Cyprus,  or  at 
Egypt  in  rebellion — and  Egypt  was  in  rebellion  off  and  on, 
under  one  dynasty  or  another,  for  half  a  century  from  the  death 
of  Darius  II  in  405.  Was  not  the  Empire  on  the  verge  of 
break-down  ?  A  united  movement  in  Greece,  and  Persia 
would  be  gone. 

Not  yet.  For,  a  few  years  after  his  victory  over  his 
brother,  Artaxerxes  avenged  himself  on  the  Spartans  who 
had  supported  Cyrus,  and  whom  he  hated.    A  Persian  envoy 

1  Anab.  iv.  3,  2  ;  and  especially  iii.  5,16,  the  lost  army  of  the  King 
in  Kurdistan. 

2  Strabo,  c.  524,  on  the  authority  of  Nearchus,  who  of  course  may  be 
speaking  of  a  later  development.  E.  R.  Bevan,  House  of  Seleucus, 
i.  77-86,  suggests  that  the  power  of  the  government  had  never  reached 
very  far  from  the  high  roads. 

3  Plut.  Artax.  24  ;   Diod.  Sic.  xv.  8.  *  Anab.  v.  6,  8. 
^  The  actual  words  used,  in  Anab.  ii,  4,  4. 

*  Cf.  Isocrates,  Paneg.  134-135  ;  Philip,  125-126.  A  little  later 
among  the  mercenaries  are  Iphicrates  (Diod.  Sic.  xv.  41),  Chabrias  (Plut. 
Ages.  2i^),  and  King  Agesilaos  himself  in  his  old  age  (Xen.  Ages. 
2,  28  ;   Plut.  Ages.  2,€>). 


PERSIA  233 

appeared  in  Greece  with  a  subsidy,  and  all  Greece  was  in  arms 
against  itself  (395  B.C.)-  A  Persian  fleet,  next  year,  though 
under  a  Greek  admiral,  swept  the  Spartan  from  the  sea  (the 
battle  of  Cnidos,  August,  394).  Pharnabazos  was  cured  of  all 
friendliness  for  Spartans,  and,  at  a  hint  from  Conon,  fell  back 
on  Alcibiades'  plan  of  getting  the  Greek  powers  on  a  level — 
and  rebuilt  the  walls  that  linked  Athens  to  the  sea  and  made  her 
independent.  Then  the  Spartans  themselves  came  to  terms 
and  asked  peace,  and  received  what  posterity  calls  the  Peace 
of  Antalkidas  but  what  contemporaries  called,  with  a  bitter 
accuracy,  that  heightened  the  shame  of  it,  the  King's  Peace. 
This  finally  and  definitely  gave  the  Asiatic  Greeks  to  the  King, 
while  it  made  him  arbiter,  manager,  "  quartermaster,"  and 
absolute  lord  of  all  Greece.^  The  biting  words  of  Isocrates 
accentuate  the  complete  triumph  of  the  King. 

The  King  had  triumphed,  and  yet  everybody  knew  it  was 
a  victory  of  the  Persian  kind — like  the  only  victory  Tissa- 
phemes  won  over  the  Ten  Thousand — an  affair  of  lies  and 
treachery  and  darics.  The  satraps  knew  it,  and  they  knew 
the  King,  and  protected  themselves  by  hiring  Greek  mercen- 
aries and  by  rebellion — like  the  faithful  Datames,  fallen  on 
evil  times  and  denounced  by  traitor  tongues  ;  they  rebelled 
one  after  another  ;  and  if  they  were  reduced,  it  was  because 
they  sold  one  another  to  the  King. 

It  was  seventy  years  after  the  rebellion  of  Cyrus  before  the 
Empire  actually  fell.  AgesUaos  had  attempted  to  overthrow 
it.  His  wish  to  start  like  Agamemnon  with  a  solemn  ritual  at 
Aulis  2  was  a  symbol  of  his  intention  to  march  as  far  up  country 
as  he  could,  to  capture  the  King  if  he  could  ;  but  the  ritual 
and  the  expedition  achieved  nothing — nothing,  unless  we 
reckon,  as  we  should,  a  second  demonstration  that  the  Persian 
had  no  troops  to  match  against  Greek  hoplites  and  that  a 
strong  Greek  force  might  march  where  it  pleased  in  the  King's 
country.  It  was  Alexander  who  overthrew  Persia,  and 
Polybius  thus  sums  up  the  causes  of  his  expedition.^     It  was 

^  Isocrates,  Paneg.  120,  121. 

2  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  3.  The  Homeric  touch  reappears  in  Alex- 
ander very  markedly.  Cf.  Plut.  de  fort,  Alex.  i.  c.  4.  'AXe^avSpou 
Tj]v  Acriav  i^rjfxepovvTOS  "Ojiripos  rjv  dvayvaaixa. 

3  Polybius,  iii.  6,  9-13. 


234  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

not  to  avenge  the  wrongs  Persia  had  done  to  Greece^ — that 
was  a  mere  pretext ;  it  was  that  he  knew  the  meaning  of 
Xenophon's  retreat,  of  Agesilaos'  filibustering  ;  that  he  knew 
Persia  was  weak  and  inefficient ;  that  the  prize  was  splendid 
and  that  he  knew  he  could  win  it. 

1  Alleged  by  Alexander  in  his  letter  to  Darius  (Arrian,  ii.  14,  4-19). 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ANABASIS 

HERE  are  few  books  in  Greek,  and  there  cannot  be 
I      many  in  other  languages,  to  match  Xenophon's  Ana- 
l      basis.    A  plain  tale  of  adventure,  simply  but  vividly 
narrated,  it  is  surprising  how,  as  one  studies  it,  it  grows  in  interest 
and  significance.     The  teller  of  the  tale  is  a  pupil  of  Socrates,  a 
contemporary  of  Thucydides  and  Euripides,  and  yet  in  gifts  and 
feelings  he  seems  to  belong  to  an  earlier  day,  to  be  the  con- 
temporary and  friend  of  Herodotus.     Born  in  the  same  deme 
and  perhaps  in  the  same  year  as  Isocrates,  he  is  content  to 
write  naturally,  to  put  down  what  comes  into  his  head  and  to 
have  no  style  at  all — unless  perhaps  we  hold  with  the  ancient 
critic  that  "  art  is  perfect  when  it  seems  to  be  nature."  ^    He 
is  a  man  who  has  travelled  far  beyond  the  limits  of  his  people, 
who  has  escaped  for  a  while  from  street  and  market  and 
assembly,  and  seen  a  new  world,  and,  like  a  Greek,  found 
himself  at  home  in  it.     He  has  seen  new  peoples — barbarians 
as  they  were  called — and  he  has  been  interested  in  them ;   he 
has  liked  the  men  he  met  and  enjoyed  his  adventures  with 
them.     And  ranging  beyond  the  common  round,  he  has  some- 
how dipped  into  the  future  and  become  the  path-finder  for  a 
new  age.     We  undervalue  him  in  comparing  him  with  Plato 
and  Euripides ;    his  greatness  is  not  theirs,  he  is  of  another 
order;   but  like  them  and  like  the  great  Greek  minds  that 
made,  centuries  before,  the  Greece  we  know,  he  too  showed 
the  Greeks  a  new  world  to  conquer  and  proved  to  them  once 
more  what  they  could  do.     He  gave  them  a  new  sense  of 
power.   In  plain  language,  he  prepared  the  way  for  Alexander — 
no  mean  feat,  when  we  think  what  Alexander  did  and  what 
Hellenism  has  meant.     And  to  come  again  to  our  story,  he 
gave  the  world  new  insight  into  the  possibilities  of  reflective 

^  Longinus,  22,  rore  yap  t)  Te^vri  TeXeios  rjviK   av  (f)V(ns  elvai  8oiifj. 

23s 


236  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

warfare  and  demonstrated  the  military  weakness  of  the 
strongest  empire  that  men  had  known.  The  book  is  a 
pioneer's  book — in  autobiography,  in  travel,  in  military  history 
alike,  it  marks  an  epoch  ;  in  each  it  is  the  oldest  we  have,  and 
still  fresh  and  bright,  a  human-hearted  book  of  the  kind  that 
never  grows  old. 

Something  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  chapter  of  the 
effect  produced  upon  the  world  by  the  expedition  of  Cyrus 
and  the  retreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand — the  latter  in  itself  the 
most  signal  triumph  of  Greek  arms  between  Salamis  and  the 
battle  of  the  Granikos.  Here  our  task  is  different — it  is  to 
study  the  book  and  the  man  who  wrote  it,  to  follow  (in  brief) 
the  story  of  adventure,  and  to  see  something  of  its  value.  For 
the  whole  book  is  alive,  and  it  is  the  Greek  spirit  within  it  that 
makes  it  live.  Every  chapter  of  it  is  a  page  from  Greek  life 
and  illustrates  for  us  how  a  Greek  looked  at  the  world,  how 
he  touched  it,  entered  into  it,  and  mastered  it,  and  what  every 
fresh  contact  meant.  Mountain  and  river,  city  and  sea,  the  vast 
spaces  of  Asia — and  all  the  variety  of  the  foreigner,  from  the 
Persian  prince  to  the  primitive  savage  of  the  highlands — 
and  all  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  multitudinous  Greek 
mind,  friction,  co-operation,  friendship,  peril  shared  and  the 
common  enjoyment  of  adventure,  and  the  great  sense  of  deliver- 
ance and  triumph — all  these  things,  varieties  of  human  ex- 
perience that  have  never  failed  to  stir  the  spirit  and  make  the 
heart  beat,  as  age  after  age  men  have  known  them  in  one  form 
or  another — they  fill  the  pages  of  Xenophon,  all  living  and 
interpreted  in  a  dialect  simple,  strong  and  true,  intelligible  at 
once  to  any  man  who  has  any  understanding  for  simplicity  and 
truth.    Wordsworth  has  spoken  of 

the  depth  of  human  souls, 
Souls  that  appear  to  have  no  depth  at  all 
To  careless  eyes — 

and  one  is  tempted  to  put  Xenophon  in  this  class — so  familiar 
it  is  by  now  to  find  him  despised  and  ignored,  dismissed  as 
naive  and  unimportant  by  clever  persons.  But  for  those  who 
care  to  see,  the  Anabasis  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  and 
attractive  pictures  of  Greek  life  that  antiquity  has  left  us. 
In  the  pages  that  follow  some  attempt  will  be  made  to  indicate 


THE  ANABASIS  237 

some  aspects  of  the  story  that  bear  upon  our  general  theme  of 
Greek  movement  between  Pericles  and  Philip. 

In  the  early  centuries  of  Greek  history  we  meet  the  soldier 
of  fortune,  often  far  enough  afield  from  the  Greek  city  on  the 
Asian  shore  that  gave  him  birth.  In  Egypt  he  carves  his  name 
on  the  legs  of  the  gods  ;  he  serves  under  Nebuchadnezzar  in 
Babylonia. 1  Nearer  home  he  makes  a  t5rrant  house  secure 
for  one  or  two  generations.  And  then  for  a  while  we  hear 
less  of  him.  The  islands  and  the  Asian  cities  sink  into  weakness 
and  obscurity,  and  the  great  states  of  European  Greece  in  their 
struggles  against  one  another  and  against  Persia  occupy  the 
attention  of  history,  and  little  is  heard  of  mercenary  troops. 
There  was,  it  would  seem,  occupation  enough,  and  no  doubt  the 
Athenian  fleet  in  its  great  days  absorbed  vast  numbers  of  men. 
"  If  we  borrow  the  money,"  says  a  Corinthian,  "  we  shall  hire 
away  their  foreign  seamen  with  better  wages.  For  the 
strength  of  Athens  is  bought  rather  than  native."  2  It  may 
be  that  we  have  here  the  explanation  why  the  disasters  in 
Egypt  in  Artaxerxes'  reign  had  comparatively  so  little  effect 
upon  Athenian  prosperity.  Ships  and  citizens  were  losses 
indeed,  but  mercenaries  lost  might  involve  some  slight  com- 
pensation if  the  Athenian  plan  of  paying  wages  well  after 
date  3  prevailed  at  this  period.  In  the  Peloponnesian  War  wo 
find  mercenaries  employed  on  both  sides — like  "  the  Manti- 
neians  and  other  Arcadians,  accustomed  to  attack  any  enemy 
who  from  time  to  time  might  be  pointed  out  to  them,  whoever 
they  might  be,  and  in  this  case  counting  the  Arcadians  serving 
with  the  Corinthians  to  be  enemies  as  much  as  any  other,  for 
the  sake  of  gain."  *  When  Athens  fell,  and  the  Thirty  ruled 
her,  we  find  them  in  self-defence  hiring  foreign  mercenaries — 
"  whole  towns  full,"  Lysias  indignantly  says.^ 

After  the  Peloponnesian  War,*  and  indeed  for  the  whole 
two  and  half  centuries  down  to  the  conquest  by  the  Romans, 
Greek  warfare  is  more  and  more  in  the  hands  of  mercenaries. 
This  was  due  to  two  main  causes — to  the  utter  disorganization 
of  Greek  life,  which   resulted   from  the  war  and  involved 

^  Cf.  Chapter  II.  pp.  39,  40.  2  xhuc.  i.  121,  3. 

*  Thuc.  viii.  45,  2.  *  Thuc.  vii.  57,  9. 

^  Lysias,  xii.  60  ;  which  may  be  one  reason  why  they  confiscated 
his  father's  armament  factory  (xii.  17-19). 


238  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

economic  ruin  and  agricultural  stagnation  over  great  areas  ; 
and  to  the  new  developments  that  military  science  was  showing. 
Greek  warfare  in  the  old  days,  as  the  Persian  critic  said/  was 
simple  enough — a  level  plain,  two  armies,  and  straightforward 
massacre  till  one  side  gave  way.  The  rise  of  light-armed 
forces  and  of  cavalry,  the  new  attention  to  siege  operations, 
the  possibilities  of  making  army  and  navy  co-operate  whether 
close  at  hand  or  hundreds  of  miles  apart,  2  and  the  conceivable 
combination  of  every  method  at  once,  made  war  a  new  thing, 
far  outside  the  capacities  of  the  political  leader  elected 
"  General "  for  a  year.  It  becomes  a  science,  and  we  meet 
with  men  who  professed  to  teach  it.^  Harpers  and  dancers 
learnt  their  trades,  said  Socrates,  "  but  most  generals  improvise 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment."  But  that  day  was  passing  or 
had  passed.  A  more  striking  and  remunerative  trade  than 
lecturing  on  military  science  was  that  of  the  man  who  engaged 
his  own  mercenary  soldiers  and  then  leased  himself  and  his 
troop  to  an  employer,  prince,  satrap,  or  city,  and  took  supreme 
charge  himself  of  all  military  operations  or  acted  under 
another  but  in  command  of  his  own  forces.  Xenophon's  tone 
rather  suggests  the  feeling  that  the  practical  man  has  for  the 
theorist  when  he  speaks  of  the  professor  "  ready  to  serve  if 
any  city  or  tribe  needed  a  general "  ;  but  the  other  sort  fill 
the  Anabasis.  Good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  like  other  men, 
Xenophon  knew  them,  and  some  of  them  he  liked.  They 
at  least — when  they  spoke  of  war — knew  what  they  were 
talking  about,  so  far  as  a  subject  always  changing  and  de- 
veloping can  be  known. 

The  Anabasis  begins  with  the  minimum  of  prelude. 
Darius  II  on  the  approach  of  death  wished  to  see  his  two 
sons.  So  Cyrus  went  up  from  the  coast,  taking  with  him 
Tissaphernes  "  as  a  friend/'  and  a  guard  of  three  hundred  Greek 
hoplites  commanded  by  the  Arcadian  Xenias.  The  presence 
of  the  "  friend  "  was  perhaps  a  necessary  precaution,  but  the 
"  friend  "  managed  to  whisper  to  the  new  King,  Artaxerxes  II, 
that  Cyrus  was  plotting  against  him.     This  may  or  may  not 

»  Herodotus,  vii.  9,  2^.     Cf.  Chapter  VII.  p.  218. 

2  As  in  the  reduction  of  Athens  by  Lysander. 

3  e.g.  Dionysodorus,  Xen.  Mem.  iii.  i,  1-7  ;  Koiratadas,  Anah.  vii. 
I.  33- 


THE  ANABASIS  239 

have  been  true,  but  Cyrus  came  near  being  killed,  and  when, 
by  his  mother's  aid,  he  escaped  death  and  regained  his  pro- 
vinces, he  at  once  took  steps  to  be  King  himself.  He  began 
by  quietly  securing  large  forces  of  Greek  hoplites.  He  had 
garrisons  already  in  a  number  of  cities,  and  he  gave  orders 
to  the  commanders  to  increase  them  with  as  many  men  as 
they  could  get,  the  best  obtainable,  preferably  Peloponnesians. 
There  were  reasons  for  this  preference  —  Arcadians  and 
Achaeans,  as  we  have  seen,  were  in  the  way  of  serving  as 
mercenaries ;  and  Cyrus  had  already  some  understanding 
with  Lysander,  if  not  with  the  Spartan  government,  to 
judge  from  the  support  which  it  gave  him  with  its 
navy.  Beside  increasing  his  garrisons,  Cyrus  raised  troops 
for  two  or  three  other  avowed  purposes.  He  had  a  private 
war  with  Tissaphernes,  which  Artaxerxes  would  quite  well 
understand,  and  was,  in  fact,  not  sorry  to  see,  for  gratitude 
was  not  an  element  in  this  King's  character. *  He  also  an- 
nounced his  intention  to  reduce  the  Pisidians,  and  enrolled 
men  for  that  expedition.  He  further  maintained  the  Spartan 
exile  Clearchus  in  a  sort  of  war  with  the  Thracians  who  worried 
the  Greeks  of  the  Chersonnese.  Clearchus  seems  to  have  been 
alone  of  them  all  in  Cyrus'  secret.  He  was  a  hard,  harsh, 
and  rather  doctrinaire  soldier,  but  somehow  appealed  to 
Xenophon  as  Agesilaos  also  did.  With  a  subsidy  of  10,000 
darics  from  Cyrus  and  further  sums  from  the  cities  of  the 
Hellespont,  Clearchus  was  able  without  waking  suspicion  to 
raise  a  large  force,  and  when  he  joined  at  last,  it  was  with 
1000  hoplites,  800  Thracian  peltasts,  and  200  Cretan  bowmen. ^ 
Yet  farther  afield  in  Thessaly,  Aristippus  of  the  noble  house 
of  the  Aleuadai  of  Larissa  was  subsidized.  He  was  engaged, 
it  would  appear,  in  a  war  against  the  new  democracy  of  the 
town,  and  was  bent  on  restoring  his  family  ;  but  he  received 
instructions  not  to  make  terms  with  his  opponents  till  Cyrus 
gave  word. 

At  last  the  moment  came,  and  the  various  forces  began 
to  assemble  at  Sardis,  and  their  destination  was  revealed  : 
they  were  designed  for  war  against  the  Pisidians.  Tissaphernes 
had  word  of  all ;    and,  "  thinking  the  preparations  rather 

*  To  be  fair  to  him,  neither  was  unusual  resentment. 

2  Cretan  bowmen  in  the  Peloponnesian  War  (Thuc.  vi.  25). 


240  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

large,"  he  posted  off  with  a  bodyguard  of  500  horse  to  tell 
the  King.  Cyrus  advanced  to  Celainai,  and  there  waited 
a  month.  At  this  place  Clearchus  joined,  and  Cyrus  held  a 
review  and  found  he  had  about  11,000  Greek  hophtes  and 
some  2000  peltasts.  The  men  came  from  all  over  the  Greek 
world— even  Syracuse  and  Thurii  were  represented.  Amphi- 
polis,  Dardania,  Oeta,  Acarnania,  Boeotia,  Locri,  Samos,  and 
Chios  appear  among  the  native  places.  But  we  hear  most 
of  Peloponnesians  and  in  particular  of  Arcadians,  though 
even  toward  the  end  the  Arcadians  and  Achaeans  seem 
scarcely  to  number  more  than  half  of  the  forces.  First  and 
last  we  glean  the  names  of  some  half-dozen  Athenians  beside 
Xenophon  and  "  Theopompus."  Spartans  were  few — one  or 
two  exiles,  notably  Clearchus,  and  the  commander  Cheirisophos, 
who  joined  with  700  hoplites  at  Issos,  dispatched  there  on  a 
fleet  by  the  Spartan  government. 

What  sort  of  men  they  were  comes  out  in  the  story. 
Treachery,  intrigue,  dissension  were  not  unnatural  among 
men  of  such  various  stocks  and  such  miscellaneous  history. 
Women  of  the  hefaira  class  came  with  them  in  great  numbers, 
slave  or  free, — one  man  brought  a  dancing-girl  whom  he 
owned, — and  shared  with  them  their  adventures  in  Mesopotamia 
and  the  mountains.^  Isocrates,  twenty  years  later,  gives  the 
numbers  of  the  men  at  6000 — not  men  picked  for  valour,  he 
says,  but  men  compelled  by  poverty  to  go  abroad. ^  Mer- 
cenaries, Isocrates  says  elsewhere  (in  355  B.C.),  speaking 
more  generally,  are  "  men  without  cities,  runaway  slaves, 
a  congeries  of  every  kind  of  villainy,  who  will  always  desert 
for  more  pay."  ^  Xenophon  gives  a  more  favourable 
account  of  his  fellow-soldiers^^ — "  most  of  them  had  not 
sailed  from  home  for  this  service  for  want  of  a  livelihood, 
but  because  they  had  heard  a  good  account  of  C3n"us  ;  some 
brought  men  with  them,  and  others  had  sunk  money  in  the 
expedition  ;  ^  others  again  had  run  away  from  fathers  and 
mothers,  and  some  had  left  children  ^  behind  them,  and  meant 

1  Anab.  iv.  3,  19  ;  v.  3,  i  ;  iv.  i,  14  ;  the  dancer,  vi.  i,  12. 

2  Isocrates,  Paneg.  146.     *  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  44-47.     *  Anab.  vi.  4,  8. 
6  Cf.  Isocrates,  Philip,  96,  on  bounties  given  by  those  engaged  in 

^evokoyfiv  at  this  time. 
*  Cf.  Anab.  iii.  1,3. 


THE  ANABASIS  241 

to  make  something  and  return  ;  they  had  heard  that  the 
other  men  with  Cyrus  did  very  well  for  themselves/'  How 
Cyrus  was  recommended  as  a  paymaster,  we  can  see  in  the 
promise  held  out  to  Xenophon  himself  by  Proxenos,  that,  if 
he  would  come,  he  would  make  him  a  friend  of  Cyrus  ;  and 
Cyrus,  Proxenos  added,  he  reckoned  as  more  to  him  than  his 
country  was.^  The  generosity  of  Cyrus  is  a  frequent  point, 
and  there  can  also  be  little  doubt  that  a  commander  of  such 
spirit  and  such  friendliness  would  attract  men.  Poverty 
there  was  in  Greece,  and  it  helped  the  recruiting  officers. 
Long  afterwards  Theocritus  in  one  of  his  idylls  makes  dis- 
appointed love  turn  a  shepherd's  thoughts  to  enlistment 
abroad.  2 

None  of  them  knew  where  they  were  going,  except  Clear- 
chus^ — their  goal,  they  were  told,  was  Pisidia.  It  was  not 
till  they  were  in  Cilicia  that  they  began  to  suspect  that  the 
expedition  was  really  against  the  King,  "  They  were  afraid 
of  the  journey,"  Xenophon  says  at  a  later  point ;  "  but,  though 
reluctant,  they  went  all  the  same,  for  shame — for  shame  of  one 
another  and  of  Cyrus  ;  and  of  these  Xenophon  was  one."  * 

The  story  of  the  mutiny  at  Tarsus,  when  they  first  suspected 
the  truth,  is  very  characteristic.^  They  said  flatly  they  would 
go  no  farther ;  they  had  not  been  hired  to  march  against  the 
King.  Clearchus,  the  Spartan,  true  to  the  national  character 
and  his  own,  tried  to  force  them,  and  he  came  near  being  stoned 
to  death.  The  use  of  stones  by  the  Ten  Thousand  is  very  fre- 
quent, a  blunter  and  more  public  way  of  settling  accounts  with 
an  unpopular  officer  than  the  modern  one  of  the  bullet.  Clear- 
chus on  this  hint  tried  the  other  way — of  persuasion.  He 
called  an  assembly,  ecclesia,  and  as  ever  with  the  Greeks  the 
matter  came  to  a  public  meeting  and  a  vote.  The  modern 
reader  will  remember  the  storm  in  Eothen — "  where  was  the 
crew  ?  It  was  a  crew  no  longer,  but  rather  a  gathering  of 
Greek  citizens  ;  the  shout  of  the  seamen  was  changed  for  the 
murmuring  of  the  people — the  spirit  of  the  old  Demos  was 
alive.  The  men  came  aft  in  a  body  and  loudly  asked  that  the 
vessel  should  be  put  about,  and  that  the  storm  be  no  longer 
tempted.     Now,  then,  for  speeches.     The  captain,  his  eyes 

^  A  nab.  iii.  1,4.  ^  Idyll,  14.  3  Anab.  iii.  i,  10. 

*  Anab.  iii.  i,  10.  ^  Anab.  i.  3,  i  ff. 

16 


242  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

flashing  fire,  his  frame  all  quivering  with  emotion — wielding 
his  every  limb,  like  another  and  a  louder  voice,  pours  forth  the 
eloquent  torrent  of  his  threats  and  his  reasons,  his  commands 
and  his  prayers  ;  he  promises,  he  vows,  he  swears  that  there  is 
safety  in  holding  on — safety,  if  Greeks  will  be  brave. ' '  Kinglake 
pictures  the  men  "doubtfully  hanging  between  the  terrors  of  the 
storm  and  the  persuasion  of  glorious  speech,"  till  "brave 
thoughts  winged  on  Grecian  words  gained  their  natural  mastery 
over  terror."  Clearchus  met  his  soldiers,  and  managed  to 
weep  before  them — ^he  threw  in  his  lot  with  them,  he  would 
abandon  Cyrus,  and  so  forth.  Meantime  by  a  private  message 
he  reassured  the  prince,  and  then  got  the  soldiers  to  discuss 
alternative  plans,  and  so  on,  till  by  dint  of  fair  words  and  half 
a  daric  more  a  month,  the  Greeks  consented  to  march  on — 
against  Abrocomas,  though  they  still  suspected  it  was  against 
the  King. 

N  At  Thapsacus  on  the  Euphrates  there  was  another  mutiny. 
They  did  not  wish  to  take  the  decisive  step  of  crossing  the  river, 
for  Cyrus  had  now  avowed  his  purpose.  But  Menon  the  Thess- 
alian,  who  proved  his  gift  for  treachery  more  clearly  later  on, 
managed  the  matter  by  finesse.  He  persuaded  his  own  men 
to  cross  while  the  rest  were  still  debating  in  ecclesia — to  steal  a 
march  on  their  comrades.  In  this  way  they  would  win  extra 
bounties  from  Cyrus  for  being  the  first ;  and  if  the  rest  failed 
to  follow,  then  they  would  cross  back  again. 

In  this  way  the  army  manages  its  discipline — not  quite  as 
modem  European  soldiers  would  wish  it.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  they  were  essentially  a  foreign  legion  and  in 
no  sense  a  national  force.  Leaders  and  men  were  much  on  a 
level,  and  anybody  might  offer  a  suggestion.  Later  on,  when 
Xenophon  was  in  charge,  he  made  it  known  that  he  welcomed 
such  suggestions — "  the  men  all  knew  that  they  might 
approach  him  at  breakfast  or  at  dinner,  and,  even  if  he  were 
asleep,  wake  him  up  and  tell  him  anything  any  man  had  to  say 
that  bore  on  the  war."  Xenophon  always  meets  mutiny  half- 
way and  disarms  it  by  sense  and  good  humour.  He  will  hear 
what  is  to  be  said — anybody  can  speak  ;  only  let  them  consider 
where  they  are,  in  what  danger  they  stand,  and  how  they  will 
heighten  that  danger  by  divisions  and  by  quarrelling.  Back 
to  the  facts — all  above-board — and  now  in  good  temper  let  us 


THE  ANABASIS  243 

look  at  the  thing  as  it  is ;  and  he  carries  the  men  with  him. 
Or,  if  he  does  not,  well,  they  are  still  friends,  and  by  and  by 
they  are  working  together  again.  Always  reasonable,  often 
with  a  touch  of  playfulness  in  his  speech,  he  keeps  his  crew  of 
shipwrecked  pirates  (the  analogy  is  only  too  close)  working 
together  till  safety  is  assured.^  The  more  closely  we  study  the 
Ten  Thousand,  with  their  natural  and  inevitable  want  of 
cohesion,  their  gusts  of  fury  and  suspicion — "  all  of  a  sudden 
we  hear  a  row — '  hit  'em !  hit  'em !  stone  'em !  stone  'em ! ' — and 
next  moment  we  see  a  crowd  running  up  with  stones  in  their 
hands  "  ^ — the  more  one  wonders  that  they  ever  got  through. 
"  One  unfortunate  result,"  says  Mr.  William  Miller  of  the 
modern  Greeks,^  "  of  this  extreme  democracy,  so  firmly  en- 
grained in  the  Hellenic  character,  is  the  disinclination  to  obey  a 
leader  and  the  consequent  tendency  to  split  up  into  cliques  and 
groups.  The  Venetians  truly  said,  '  Every  five  Greeks,  six 
generals.'  "  Turkish  discipline  is  better;  but  at  what  a  price 
it  is  had  !  That  the  most  gifted  races  on  earth  are  the  hardest 
to  discipline  seems  a  consequence  from  independence  of  mind.* 
Xenophon  is  all  on  the  side  of  discipline,^  but  the  discipline 

1  Perhaps  the  best  speech  of  all  is  in  Anab.  v.  7. 

^  Anab.  v.  7,  21.  ^  Greek  Life  in  Town  and  Country,  p.  7. 

*  A  very  interesting  parallel  is  given  by  Parkman  in  his  Oregon 
Trail,  ch.  xxvi.  In  the  Mexican  War  of  1846  the  Missourians,  ''if 
discipline  and  subordination  are  the  criterion  of  merit,  were  worthless 
soldiers  indeed.  .  .  .  Their  victories  were  gained  in  the  teeth  of  every 
established  precedent  of  warfare.  .  ,  .  Doniphan's  regiment  marched 
through  New  Mexico  more  like  a  band  of  free  companions  than  like  the 
paid  soldiers  of  a  modern  government.  ...  At  the  battle  of  Sacramento, 
his  frontiersmen  fought  under  every  disadvantage.  The  Mexicans 
had  chosen  their  position  ;  they  were  drawn  up  across  the  valley  that 
led  to  their  native  city  of  Chihuahua  ;  their  whole  front  was  covered 
by  intrenchments  and  defended  by  batteries,  and  they  outnumbered 
the  invaders  by  five  to  one.  An  eagle  flew  over  the  Americans,  and 
a  deep  murmur  rose  along  their  lines.  The  enemy's  batteries  opened  ; 
long  they  remained  under  fire,  but  when  at  length  the  word  was  given, 
they  shouted  and  ran  forward.  In  one  of  the  divisions,  when  midway 
to  the  enemy,  a  drunken  officer  ordered  a  halt ;  the  exasperated  men 
hesitated  to  obey.  '  Forward,  boys  !  '  cried  a  private  from  the  ranks  ; 
and  the  Americans  rushed  like  tigers  upon  the  enemy,"  and  they  won 
a  complete  victory.  All  this — down  to  the  eagle — is  surprisingly  like 
the  Ten  Thousand. 

^  Cf.  Anab.  iii.  2,  29-31  ;  v.  7,  26-33. 


244  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

he  managed  to  attain  depended  more  on  his  own  personal 
qualities  than  on  anything  else.  No  wonder  that,  once  estab- 
lished at  Scillus,  he  had  no  wish  to  campaign  with  mercenaries 
again  !  No  wonder  that  he  writes  so  often,  with  such  wistful 
admiration,  of  Spartan  discipline  !  Yet,  as  Grote  loved  to 
emphasize,  with  all  the  handicaps  against  him,  the  Athenian 
managed  things  better  than  the  Spartan  with  this  im- 
possible army  of  democrats  and  demagogues. 

This,  then,  is  the  Army  of  the  Ten  Thousand,  and  with  it — 
with  only  two  mutinies  of  any  account,  and  these  not  without 
some  moral  justification — Cyrus  marched  against  his  brother. 
Of  late  a  military  commentary  upon  the  expedition  has  been 
published  by  a  French  soldier.  Colonel  Arthur  Boucher,  author 
already  of  works  looking  forward  to  the  war  of  1914-5.  Colonel 
Boucher  is  strongly  for  Xenophon  against  his  scholarly  com- 
mentators— "  in  general,  the  classical  solution,  on  the  points 
where  it  disagrees  with  the  text,  clashes  still  more  with  the 
most  elementary  strategic  necessities.  The  military  solution, 
answering  rigorously  to  these  same  necessities,  is  in  accordance 
with  the  data  of  the  text."^  "It  is  with  the  Anabasis," 
he  says,  "  that  military  history,  properly  so  called,  begins — 
that  is  to  say,  the  technical  history  of  a  war  written  by  a 
soldier.  .  .  .  The  Anabasis  permits  the  strategist  to  follow 
most  closely  the  operations  of  the  attacking  commander,  and 
on  those  of  his  opponent  it  gives  general  information  of  great 
importance."  ^  Colonel  Boucher's  criticism  of  Cyrus  as  general 
is  of  interest.  There  are  points  in  which  he  differs  from  some 
established  authorities  —  he  refuses,  for  instance,  to  concur 
with  them  ^  in  Plutarch's  censure  of  Clearchus  in  the  battle  of 
Cunaxa ;  "  Plutarque  parait  peu  verse  dans  les  choses  de  la 
guerre,"  is  his  verdict,*  and  few  readers  of  Plutarch  could 
question  it. 

In  summary,  then,  the  conclusions  of  Colonel  Boucher  are 
these. ^  He  recognizes  the  able  use  of  fleet  and  army  in  com- 
bined action  which  gave  Cyrus  Cilicia  and  Syria,  and  the  rnone- 
tary  advantage  that  Cilicia  meant,  which  enabled  him  to  pay 

1  L'Anabase  de  Xenophon,  p.  xix.  ^  j^^*^.  p,  xxix. 

8  e.g.  Eduard  Meyer,  Gesch.  v.  §  834.  *  L'Anabase,  p.  131. 

6  L'Anabase,  pp.  86-88.  As  I  share  Plutarch's  disability,  I  prefer 
to  summarize  and  not  to  criticize. 


THE  ANABASIS  245 

his  Greek  troops.  The  commissariat  he  commends  as  simple 
and  practical,  emphasizing  four  points  :  the  use  of  waggons 
(of  which  there  were  still  four  hundred  on  the  day  of  battle) 
to  bring  food  from  the  nearest  revictualling  centres  ;  the  halts 
at  such  centres  to  rest  the  army  and  to  extend  the  zones 
of  requisition;  the  "  Lydian  market"  allowed  to  foHow  the 
army  ;  and  the  reserve  convoy.  He  remarks  the  great  rapidity 
of  the  march  ^ — 68  stages  averaging  29  kilometres,  an  extra- 
ordinary figure  for  a  march  so  long.  Twice  there  were  serious 
delays — at  Tarsus,  in  consequence  of  the  Greek  mutiny  and 
the  non-arrival  of  the  fleet  ;  and  at  Thapsacus,  for  a  detailed 
reconnaissance  of  the  river — both  involving  serious  conse- 
quences which  Cyrus  recognized.  The  march  from  Thapsacus  ^ 
to  the  frontiers  of  Babylonia — 875  kilometres  in  35  days  with 
7  days  for  rest — will  bear  comparison  with  the  best  that 
history  records.  In  short,  the  strategic  part  of  the  operations 
could  hardly  have  been  better  executed.  In  the  matter  of 
tactics,  Cyrus  is  open  to  criticism.  A  fixed  idea  of  where 
AiLaxerxes  must  be  was  the  source  of  all  his  errors.  "  Con- 
vinced of  the  clairvoyance  oi  his  imagination,"  he  advances 
unaware  of  the  nearness  of  the  enemy,  only  a  few  kilometres 
away.  Yet  his  activity  in  disposing  his  troops  repairs  the 
mistake,  and  he  is  ready.  In  making  his  dispositions,  he  is 
clear  that  victory  in  the  centre,  i.e.  over  Artaxerxes,  will  be 
definitive ;  therefore  the  Greeks  must  be  there  to  meet 
Artaxerxes.  But  the  order  given  to  Clearchus  is  not  one  that 
could  be  executed.  The  success  of  the  Greeks  was  thus  not 
decisive,  as  they  left  the  King's  division  unbroken.  Cjn-us 
seized  the  moment,  routed  his  brother,  and  then — fell  by  an 
act  of  rashness.  Still  Boucher  concludes  that  Cyrus  had  in 
him  the  qualities  that  make  a  great  general. 

But  if  the  First  Book  of  the  Anabasis  permits  the  soldier  to 
follow  closely  the  military  operations  day  by  day,  the  mere 
human  being  has  glimpses  that  leave  him  less  forlorn.  Xeno- 
phon  is  always  alert  for  the  human  interest.  The  raising  of 
the  men,  the  mutinies,  the  desertion  (at  Myriandros)  of  Xenias 
the  Arcadian  and  Pasion  the  Megarian  on  a  merchant  vessel,  and 

^  Xenophon  emphasizes  this  {Anab.  i.  5,  9). 

^  The   Colonel   does  not  find  Thapsacus  so  near  Babylon  as  the 
classical  atlases  give  it. 


246  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  camp-talk  that  followed — the  cowards  !  serve  them  right 
if  Cyrus  catches  them,  and  pity  if  he  does — and  the  magnan- 
imity of  the  prince  ^ — and  then  the  elaborate  machinations  of 
the  royal  family  of  Cilicia,  through  which  Syennesis  yields  to 
force  what  his  queen  has  arranged  by  diplomacy  ^ — the  specula- 
tion as  to  whether  Artaxerxes  would  fight  :  "  Do  you  think, 
Cyrus,  he  will  fight  ?  "  asked  Clearchus.  "  By  Zeus,"  said 
Cyrus,  "if  he  is  the  son  of  Darius  and  Parysatis,  and  my 
brother,  I  shall  never  win  all  this  without  a  fight  "  ^ — the 
blunt  suggestion  of  Gaulites,  the  Samian  exile,  who  tells  Cyrus 
that  some  say  he  won't  remember  his  friends,  and  some  that 
he  has  nothing  for  them  if  he  does,  and  Cyrus'  magnificent 
answer :  "  Men  !  the  empire  of  my  fathers  reaches  southward 
to  where  men  cannot  live  for  the  heat,  and  northward  where 
they  cannot  for  the  cold  ;  all  between,  my  brother's  friends 
rule  as  satraps.  If  we  conquer,  then  we  must  put  our  friends 
in  possession  of  all  this  "  * — so  the  tale  of  parasangs  and  stages 
is  varied  with  the  play  and  movement  of  human  feeling,  and 
the  chance  talk  that  breaks  the  march  of  events  and  reveals 
the  characters  whose  interactions  make  the  events.  For  the 
scenes  of  the  journey,  the  pleasant  paradises  and  hunting 
parks  as  well  as  the  famous  defiles,  the  Cilician  and  S3n:ian 
Gates,  Xenophon  has  a  friendly  eye.  He  notes  the  sacred 
fish  of  the  river  Chalos,  which  the  Syrians  worship  as  well  as 
the  doves, ^  and  the  hunting  in  the  desert  by  the  Euphrates, 
where  trees  were  none  and  all  the  herbs  were  aromatic,  and 
where  the  Greek  soldiers  managed  by  strategy  to  catch  the 
wild  asses,  but  the  ostriches  beat  them  altogether,  horse  and 
foot — and  how  good  the  flesh  of  the  bustards  was  !  ®  and  the 
date-wine  remains  a  memory.' 

Here  and  there  is  a  touch  of  Persian  life.  The  waggons 
stick  in  the  mud  and  the  men  detailed  to  extricate  them  are 
slow — Cyrus,  "  as  if  in  anger,  ordered  the  Persian  nobles 
around  him  to  hurry  up  the  waggons.  And  then  there  was  a 
real  display  of  what  good  discipline  is.  For  they  threw  off 
their  crimson  cloaks  just  as  they  stood,  and,  as  if  charging 

^  Anab.  i.  4,  7.  ^  Anab.  i.  2,  12-27. 

3  Anab.  i.  7,  9.  *  Anab.  i.  7,  5. 

^  Anab.  i.  4,  9  ;  and  cf.  Rendel  Harris,  Letters  from  Armenia. 
*  Anab.  i.  5,  2-3.  ''  Anab.  i.  5,  10. 


THE  ANABASIS  247 

to  victory  and  down  a  steep  hill-side,  they  flew  in  their  costly 
tunics  and  embroidered  trousers,  and  some  with  necklaces 
round  their  necks  and  bracelets  on  their  wrists,  leapt  into 
the  mud,  and  quicker  than  one  could  have  thought  had  the 
waggons  high  and  dry."  ^  Such  importance  did  Cyrus  attach 
to  speed.  At  Tyriaeum,  partly  to  please  the  Cilician  queen 
Epyaxa,  Cyrus  held  a  review  of  his  Greeks — in  their  crimson 
tunics,  brass  helmets,  and  greaves,  and  with  their  shields 
uncovered  and  ready  for  action.^  He  sent  the  interpreter  to 
order  them  to  charge,  and  they  did  with  a  shout  and  a  run  ; 
and  the  Cilician  queen  turned  her  carriage  and  fled,  and  the 
hucksters  in  the  barbarian  camp  left  their  wares  and  fled  too, 
"  and  the  Greeks  with  laughter  came  to  the  tents.  The  Cilician 
was  astonished  to  see  the  brilliance  and  the  order  of  the  army  ; 
and  Cyrus  was  delighted  to  see  what  fear  the  Greeks  waked  in 
the  barbarians." 

The  battle  of  Cunaxa  Xenophon  narrates  in  a  splendid 
chapter.  Plutarch  in  his  Life  of  Artaxerxes  compares  it  with 
the  story  of  Ctesias ; — Xenophon,  he  says,  all  but  shows  us 
everything  actually  happening  before  our  eyes  ;  it  is  not  past ; 
there  it  is,  and  the  reader  feels  it  all  as  it  moves,  and  shares  the 
peril,  as  it  were,  while  he  reads  ;  but  as  for  Ctesias'  account 
of  Cyrus'  death,  it  is  "  murdering  the  man  with  a  blunt  knife."  ^ 
Eduard  Meyer  holds  that  Xenophon's  story  is  in  no  way  suffi- 
cient— a  mere  soldier's  diary.  Boucher,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
soldier  himself,  emphasizes  the  value  of  Xenophon's  account, 
and  its  precision,  which  allows  the  military  critic  to  recon- 
stitute moment  by  moment  every  feature  of  the  action  where 
the  Greeks  operate. 

The  book  closes  with  the  character  of  Cyrus  ;  the  plundering 
of  his  camp  by  the  King's  troops  ;  the  confusion  ;  the  capture 
of  the  Phocaean  mistress  of  Cyrus,  "  who  bore  the  name  of 
being  sensible  and  beautiful,"  and  the  flight  of  the  Milesian, 
naked,  to  the  Greeks  ;  the  return  of  the  hoplites  flushed  with 
their  victory  to  a  plundered  camp  and  no  supper  ;  and  their 
surprise  at  not  hearing  from  Cyrus. 

The  Second  Book  opens  with  the  strange  situation  of  the 

^  Anab.  i.  5,  7-8.  2  Anab.  i.  2,  14-18. 

^  Plut.  Artax.  8-1 1  ;    Plutarch  uses  both  accounts,  and  the  long 
rigmarole  taken  from  Ctesias  goes  far  to  justify  his  criticism. 


248  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Greeks,  three  months'  march  from  the  Aegaean,  victorious 
but  leaderless,  and  their  negotiations,  confused  and  hesitating, 
with  the  Persians.  One  moment  stands  out.  A  Greek  envoy 
is  sent  by  Tissaphernes  to  get  them  to  surrender  their  arms. 
"  Theopompus,  an  Athenian,  said  :  '  Phahnus,  as  things  are 
now,  and  as  you  see,  we  have  nothing  good  but  our  arms  and 
our  valour.  If  we  keep  our  arms,  we  think  we  might  use  our 
valour ;  but  if  we  surrendered  them,  we  might  lose  our  bodies 
too.  Do  not  think  that  we  will  yield  you  the  only  good  things 
we  have  ;  no,  with  these  we  will  fight  you  for  those  you  have.' 
Phalinus  laughed  :  '  Young  man,  you  seem  quite  a  philosopher, 
and  you  talk  charmingly ;  but  know  this — you  are  a  fool,  if 
you  think  your  valour  could  overcome  the  King's  power.'  " 
And  here  Theopompus  perhaps  drops  out  of  the  story,  unless 
the  "  worse  manuscripts  "  are  right  (as  they  often  are)  when 
they  read  "  Xenophon  "  for  "  Theopompus  " — or  unless 
the  author  by  the  name  "  Theopompus  "  is  gently  allusive 
and  means  the  young  man  whom  the  god  sent,  when  he  gave 
an  oracle  of  which  we  shall  hear  by  and  by.i  The  whole 
uneasy  book  we  may  here  pass  over  and  take  up  the  story  after 
the  treacherous  murder  of  the  Greek  commanders  by  Tissa- 
phernes. 

The  plight  of  the  Greeks  is  vividly  described  by  Xenophon  : 
"  The  Greeks  were  in  very  great  difficulties — ^they  reflected  that 
they  were  at  the  King's  gates,  surrounded  on  every  hand  by 
many  nations  and  hostile  cities  ;  no  one  would  offer  them  a 
market ;  Greece  was  not  less  than  10,000  stades  away ;  they 
had  no  guide  for  their  journey ;  impassable  rivers  lay  across 
the  homeward  way  ;  the  barbarians  who  had  marched  up  with 
Cyrus  had  betrayed  them,  too ;  they  were  alone  and  abandoned  ; 
they  had  no  friendly  cavalry,  so  that  it  was  easy  to  see  that, 
if  they  won  a  battle,  they  would  kill  no  one ;  if  they  were 
beaten,  none  of  them  would  be  left.  So  they  reflected,  and 
they  were  in  despair  ;  few  of  them  tasted  food  till  evening, 
and  few  lit  fires.     Many  never  came  to  their  arms  all  night, 

^  There  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  this  suggestion.  For  instance, 
who  but  Xenophon  was  ■•  Themistogenes  the  Syracusan,"  who  wrote 
how  the  Greeks  escaped  to  the  sea  {Hellenica,  iii.  i,  2)  ?  Was  the 
Spartan  admiral  Samios  {Hellenica,  iii.  i,  i)  or  Pythagoras  [Anah.  i.  7)  ? 
Who  was  the  shrewd  veavlcTKos  res  of  Anah.  ii.  4,  19-20  ? 


THE  ANABASIS  249 

but  rested  where  they  chanced  to  be,  unable  to  sleep  for  their 
misery  and  their  longing  for  country,  parents,  wives,  children, 
whom  they  never  expected  to  see  again." 

And  now,  with  a  Homeric  simplicity  and  a  Homeric  turn 
of  phrase,  as  Grote  remarked,  Xenophon  comes  into  the  story, 
in  the  third  person.     He  tells  how  Proxenos  wrote  the  letter  in 
which  he  urged  him  to  come  abroad  and  promised  to  make 
him  the  friend  of  Cyrus  ;  how  he  showed  the  letter  to  Socrates, 
and  Socrates  sent  him  to  consult  Apollo  in  Delphi ;   how  he 
put  the  question  in  a  way  of  his  own,  leaving  the  god  little 
option  but  to  offer  some  helpful  suggestion  in  a  matter  already 
decided  ;   and  how  Socrates  pointed  out  the  awkward  form  of 
his  address  to  the  god,  but  now  told  him  to  go — though  at  first 
he  had  not  been  sure  whether  the  city  would  like  him  to  be  the 
friend  of  Cyrus,  the  enemy  who  had  given  Sparta  such  effective 
support  in  the  Peloponnesian  War.     This  doubt  which  Socrates 
felt   is   significant — why  does  Xenophon   mention   it  ?     And 
why  does  he,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  though  he  is  explaining  his 
presence  in  the  army,  yet  give  no  hint  of  his  reasons  for  leaving 
Athens  ?     He  consulted   Socrates  ;    but,  he  half  suggests  to 
us,  he  made  up  his  mind  himself,  and  Socrates  and  the  god  had 
not    much  responsibility.     What  were  his  reasons  ?    a  mere 
fancy  for  adventure  ?     For  it  is  quite  clear  that  this  student, 
as  he  sometimes  seems  to  us,  was  a  spirited  hunter  and  a 
real    leader   of    men.     Was   it    some   memory    of    what    the 
"  young    men "  ^    or    the    knights    had     done — some    con- 
sciousness    that    Athens    also    remembered — that    quickened 
him  to  seek  foreign  service  ?    Was  he  among  those  knights 
who  were  not  trusted  to  serve  Athens  again,   or  not  in  the 
meanwhile  ?  ^ 

Whatever  his  reasons,  Xenophon  went  to  Sardis  and 
saw  Cyrus, who  asked  him  to  stay  with  them  ;  and  he  stayed,^ 
and  went  with  them,  but  neither  as  general,  nor  captain,  nor 

1  See  Chapter  IV.  p.  1 1 1  ;  Chapter  VI.  p.  187. 

*  Cf.  Hellenica,  iii.  i,  4,  where  he  tells  us  that  Athens  sent  to  the  new- 
Persian  War  in  399  a  contingent  of  -'  men  who  had  served  as  knights 
in  the  time  of  the  Thirty,  thinking  it  a  gain  for  the  Demos,  if  they  went 
away  and  perished."  Lysias,  xvi.  6,  says  or  impUes  that  some  of  them 
were  excluded  from  further  military  service  and  compelled  to  give  up 
their  equipment. 

^  Anab.  iii.  i,  9. 


250  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

soldier.^  On  the  very  verge  of  the  fatal  battle,  he  mentions 
how  Cyrus  spoke  to  him  again,  and  bade  him  tell  all  that  the 
omens  were  good  and  the  sacrifices  spoke  fair.^  But  till  the 
generals  were  murdered,  Xenophon  was  in  the  background. 
Now  things  were  different ;  the  man  who  could  save  the  rest 
must  come  forward  ;  and,  stimulated  by  a  dream,  he  did  come 
forward.  Modern  readers,  especially  some  of  a  rationalist 
school,  have  commented  in  an  unsympathetic  way  upon 
Xenophon's  dreams  and  omens  and  sacrifices.  Some  sweeping 
and  perhaps  swift  judgment  of  human  life  lies  behind  such 
criticism  ;  but  the  historian  does  better  to  judge  slowly  and 
to  study  with  sympathy.  Men  so  practical  as  Pascal  Paoli 
and  Abraham  Lincoln  have  not  disdained  to  notice  their  dreams 
— some  dreams. 2  Few  of  us,  perhaps,  would  wish  to  be  influ- 
enced by  dreams,  but  the  recurrence  of  this  type  of  great  man 
is  remarkable. 

Xenophon,  it  is  clear,  changed  the  atmosphere  from  de- 
pression to  hope  ;  only  that,  but  it  was  everything.  "  Xeno- 
phon," said  Cheirisophos  the  Spartan,  "  before  this  I  only 
knew  so  much  of  you,  that  I  had  heard  you  were  an  Athenian  ; 
but  now  I  praise  you  for  what  you  say  and  do,  and  I  wish 
there  were  lots  of  you."  *  Cheirisophos  died  at  some  point 
on  the  Euxine  coast  of  a  drug  which  he  had  taken  to  allay  a 
fever,  but  in  the  interval  he  and  Xenophon  worked  together 
effectively  and  happily.  They  only  once  disagreed,  and  then 
about  the  treatment  of  a  native  guide,  whom  the  Spartan 
struck  in  anger.  It  is  worth  recording  here,  too,  how  they 
chaffed  one  another.  For  such  things  do  not  receive  mention  in 
the  more  formal  histories  ;    but  in  a  book  of  travel  like  the 

^  A  curious  addition  with  some  purpose  behind  it,  which  I  cannot 
clearly  make  out. 

2  Anab.  i.  8,  14. 

^  Boswell,  Corsica,  p.  361,  for  Paoli.  John  G.  Nicolay,  Short  Life 
of  Abraham  Lincoln,  p.  531  ;  Lincoln  on  the  morning  of  14  April,  1865, 
told  his  cabinet  he  had  the  previous  night  had  his  usual  dream,  which 
preceded  great  events — he  had  had  it  before  Antietam,  Murfreesboro, 
Gettysburg,  and  Vicksburg.  General  Graiit,  in  his  matter-of-fact  way, 
said  that  Murfreesboro  was  no  victory  and  had  no  important  results  ; 
but  Lincoln  was  sure  the  dream  must  refer  to  something  important. 
That  night  he  was  shot  in  Ford's  Theatre,  and  died  in  the  house  across 
the  street. 

*  Anab.  iii.  i,  45. 


THE  ANABASIS  251 

Anabasis  much  emerges  that  shows  us  the  real  texture  of  life. 
Xenophon  proposes  a  feint — stealing  a  march  on  the  mountain- 
eers— and,  with'  a  little  pun,  suggests  that  Cheirisophos  should 
undertake  it,  "  for  I  am  told  that  you  Spartans,  who  are  of 
the  Peers,  practise  stealing  from  your  boyhood,  and  there  is 
no  shame  in  stealing  where  law  allows.  ...  So  now  is  the 
time  for  you  to  show  your  training,  and  take  care  we  are  not 
caught  stealing  up  the  mountain  and  get  beaten."  "  And  I," 
says  Cheirisophos,  "  hear  that  you  Athenians  are  great  hands 
at  stealing  public  funds — won't  you  show  your  training  ?  "  ^ 
The  jests  are  slight,  but  they  let  us  see  the  temper  of  the 
men  in  the  hour  of  danger,  and  again  illuminate  character, 
and  the  terms  on  which  men  of  different  states  were 
living. 

The  story  of  the  march  it  is  not  needful  to  tell  here,  nor  to 
discuss  the  routes  taken.  At  one  point  there  is  a  good  deal 
of  difficulty,  but  when  the  regions  are  more  exactly  surveyed, 
it  may  be  resolved.  In  any  case,  travellers — the  great  von 
Moltke  among  them — bear  witness  to  the  general  truth  of 
Xenophon's  descriptions.  There  the  mountains  are  still,  and 
the  Kurds,  and,  as  Tertullian  says,  "  nothing  is  warm  there 
but  savagery."  2  Mountains,  rivers,  and  natives — Xenophon 
watches  and  remembers  all,  and  sees  them  again  as  he  writes. 
Once  more,  Boucher  insists  on  the  military  value  of  his  data, 
and  men  with  other  interests  have  praise  no  less  hearty  for  the 
Third,  Fourth,  and  Fifth  Books.  For  example,  whether  we  call 
it  comrnissariat  or  diet,  taking  the  military  or  the  anthro- 
pological view,  Xenophon  tells  us  things  that  we  do  not  find 
elsewhere — things  of  no  consequence  to  the  "  scientific " 
historian,  it  may  be,  but  illuminative.  We  saw  how  he  and 
his  friends  found  fresh  satisfactions  on  the  march  down  the 
Euphrates.  In  the  worst  days  after  the  battle,  Xenophon 
recalls  the  dates  they  ate — "  what  we  got  in  Greece,  were 
left  to  the  slaves,  but  what  the  masters  had  were  selected,  of 
a  wonderful  beauty  and  size,  and  the  colour  of  electron  "  ;  but 

1  Anab.  iv.  6,  15-16. 

2  Tertullian,  adv.  Marcion.  i.-i:  Gentes  fevocissimae  inhabitant.  .  .  . 
Duritia  de  caelo  qiioque.  Dies  mtnquam  patens,  sol  nunquam  libens  ;  unus 
aer  nebula  ;  totus  annus  hibernum,  omne  quod  fiaverit  aquilo  est  .  .  . 
nihil  illic  nisi  fentas  calet. 


252  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  wine  made  of  the  dates,  and  the  "  head  "  of  the  palm, 
though  pleasant,  gave  you  head-ache.^  So  in  the  underground 
houses  of  the  Armenian  mountains,  among  their  village  hosts 
and  the  goats  and  cattle  and  poultry,  the  Greeks  fared  sumptu- 
ously on  lamb  and  pork  and  veal  and  so  forth,  with  wheat  en 
bread  and  barley  bread,  and  "barley  wine  in  bowls,"  which 
they  drank  native-way  through  straws  and  found  "  very  strong 
indeed,  unless  one  put  water  in  ;  but  it  was  a  very  pleasant 
drink  when  one  learnt  the  way."  ^  The  strange  honey  that 
made  the  men  ill,  "  as  if  drunk  or  mad,"  is  still  known. ^  The 
strangest  diet  of  all  was  found  among  the  Mossynoeci — maga- 
zines of  dry  bread,  slices  of  pickled  dolphin,  dolphin-blubber 
(which  they  used  as  the  Greeks  use  oil),  boUed  chestnuts,  baked 
bread  or  biscuits,  and  a  wine  of  "  dry  rough  quality  "  which 
they  improved  by  adding  water.*  The  Mossynoeci  were  the 
most  barbarous  people  they  met ;  they  were  tattooed  and 
knew  nothing  even  of  such  elementary  reserve  as  the  Greeks 
had  ;  they  cut  the  heads  off  their  fallen  enemies  and  danced 
and  sang  as  they  displayed  them  ;  and  they  counted  sheer  fat 
a  beauty — the  boys  of  the  well-to-do  were  plump  and  white 
and  about  as  broad  as  they  were  long. 

Perhaps  the  most  memorable  chapter  of  all  describes  the 
march  in  the  snow.^  Colonel  Boucher  says  that  "  those  who, 
in  Algeria,  have  seen  a  troop  surprised  by  a  snowstorm  will 
recognize  how  strikingly  accurate  is  the  story  of  Xenophon  "  ; 
and  he  will  use  the  situation  to  decide  the  reading.  For  the 
manuscripts  vary  as  to  how  many  parasangs  the  men  marched 
in  three  stages — five,  ten,  or  fifteen.  Five  hours'  marching  over 
snow  in  fair  weather  would  be  much  ;   in  a  storm  impossible  ; 

1  Anab.  ii.  2,  15-16. 

^  Anab.  iv.  5,  25-31.  Ainsworth  in  1844  and  von  Moltke  later 
found  the  people  still  living  underground,  and  Boucher,  p.  217,  gives 
a  photograph  of  some  houses  of  the  kind.  Ainsworth,  On  the  Track  of 
the  Ten  Thousand,  p.  178,  adds,  •'  The  barley-wine  I  never  met  with." 
TertuUian,  adv.  Marcion.  i.  i,  appears  to  refer  to  some  of  the  customs  of 
the  Mossynoeci. 

3  Ainsworth,  op.  cit.  p.  190,  suggests  the  honey  is  probably  from  the 
flower  of  the  rose-laurel,  Nerium  oleander,  of  the  family  of  Apocynae. 
Strabo,  549,  a  story  how  it  was  put  in  the  way  of  Pompey's  soldiers,  who 
were  cut  up  before  they  recovered  from  its  effects. 

*  Mossynoeci,  Anab.  v.  4,  1-34.  ^  Anab.  iv.  5. 


THE  ANABASIS  253 

and  he  concludes  for  ten  parasangs  in  three  days.^  As  a  soldier, 
he  comments  with  Xenophon  upon  the  boots  of  the  men — 
Xenophon  noticed  that  the  new-made  brogues  of  raw  leather, 
that  they  were  now  wearing,  froze  to  the  feet,  if  they  did  not 
take  them  off  at  night. ^  The  march  in  the  driving  snow, 
which  kept  falling  till  it  was  six  feet  deep,  must  have  been 
appalling.  Ainsworth  records  his  experience  of  the  differ- 
ence in  temperatures  between  the  hot  plains  of  Mesopotamia 
and  the  Armenian  uplands  in  1839,^  ^^^  ^^^  Greeks  had  been 
equipped  for  Mesopotamia.  In  their  distress,  one  of  the 
soothsayers  suggested  sacrifice  to  the  wind  ;  and  when  it  was 
done,  says  Xenophon,  "  the  violence  of  the  storm  distinctly 
seemed  to  all  to  abate."  ^  After  this  came  other  experiences, 
bulimia  or  false  hunger,  frost-bite  and  snow-blindness,  which 
Xenophon  well  describes,^  noting,  as  he  goes,  what  remedies 
had  been  found  of  use.  At  a  later  stage  Xenophon  was  accused 
of  using  personal  violence  to  the  men.  It  was  in  these  days 
of  marching  through  the  snow  that  he  did  it — to  sit  and  rest, 
he  found,  was  dangerous,  and  at  any  cost  he  made  the  men  get 
up  and  move  and  save  themselves,  against  their  will,  from  frost- 
bite and  death.  Many  men  and  beasts,  as  it  was,  perished. 
The  speech  in  which  he  defends  himself  has  all  his  cleverness 
and  charm.  ^ 

The  most  famous  episode  in  the  retreat  is  the  first  sight 

^  Boucher,  p.  216.  He,  with  Grote,  holds  that  parasang,  like  the 
modern  farsakh,  is  roughly  an  hour's  march — not  a  uniform  distance 
at  all. 

2  Cf.  the  prevalence  of  frost-bite  from  a  similar  cause  in  the  trenches 
in  the  winter  of  19 14-5. 

3  Ainsworth,  op.  cit.  p.  173. 

*  Cf.  the  sacrifice  by  the  Magians  to  the  ^vind  at  Artemisium  (Hero- 
dotus, vii.  191),  and  what  followed.     See  Chapter  I.  p.  22. 

°  Cf.  Ralph  Stock,  Confessions  of  a  Tenderfoot  (191 3)  :  "I  have  vivid 
recollections  of  my  first  experience  of  snow-blindness.  I  was  riding  over 
snow-plains  that  ghstened  and  ghttered  like  a  sea  of  diamonds  in  thi 
midday  sun,  when  I  became  aware  of  tiny  red  spots  floating  betwee  1 
my  eyes  and  the  horse's  ears.  They  grew  rapidly  to  the  size  of  billiard 
baUs,  and  finally  burst  into  a  blood-red  mist  that  swirled  and  eddied 
before  my  eyes,  blotting  out  the  world  as  completely  as  a  red  window- 
blind.  My  mount  took  me  home — ^trust  a  horse  for  knowing  his  own 
stable — ^but  it  was  three  days  before  I  came  out  of  a  darkened  roc  1 
with  blood-shot  eyes." 

^  Anah.  v.  8,  2-26. 


254  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  the  sea.i  A  guide  is  given  them  at  Gymnias  who  under- 
takes to  bring  them  in  five  days  to  a  place  from  which  they  will 
see  the  Euxine  ;  and  meantime  they  march  through  the  land 
of  enemies  of  his  tribe,  burning  and  harrying  as  they  go. 
"  They  come  to  the  mountain  on  the  fifth  day,  and  its  name 
was  Theches.  And  when  the  men  in  front  climbed  it  and  saw 
the  sea,  there  was  great  shouting.  On  hearing  this,  Xenophon 
and  the  rear-guard  thought  that  other  enemies  must  be  attack- 
ing them  in  front ;  for  people  were  pursuing  them  out  of  the 
country  which  was  all  aflame,  and  of  these  the  rear-guard 
had  killed  some,  and  caught  others  alive  by  means  of  an 
ambush,  and  had  taken  about  twenty  wicker  shields  covered 
with  raw  hides  of  shaggy  oxen.  And  when  the  shouting 
grew  louder  and  nearer,  and  those  who  from  time  to  time  came 
up  joined  the  shouters  at  a  run,  and  the  shouting  grew  in 
volume  as  more  men  came,  it  seemed  to  Xenophon  to  be  some- 
thing of  more  import.  So  he  mounted  his  horse,  and,  taking 
with  him  Lycios  and  the  cavalry,  galloped  to  the  rescue.  And 
very  quickly,  then,  they  hear  the  soldiers  shouting  and  passing 
the  word  along  :  The  Sea  I  The  Sea  I  Then  they  all  came 
running,  rear-guard  and  all,  and  the  baggage  animals  were 
driven  up  and  the  horses.  When  they  had  all  come  to  the 
height,  then  j  they  fell  to  embracing  one  another,  and  the 
generals  and  the  captains,  with  tears.  And  on  a  sudden, 
some  one  or  other  passed  the  word,  and  the  soldiers  bring 
stones  and  build  a  huge  cairn.  Then  they  hung  on  it  a 
lot  of  raw  cowhides  and  staves  and  the  captured  wicker 
shields ;  and  the  guide  with  his  own  hands  began  to  cut  up 
the  shields  and  told  the  others  to  do  the  same.  After  this 
the  Greeks  sent  the  guide  home  again,  and  gave  him  gifts 
from  the  common  stock,  a  horse  and  a  silver  bowl,  a  Persian 
dress  and  ten  darics ;  and  he  asked  for  their  rings  and  had 
many  given  him  by  the  soldiers."  What  a  memory  to  carry 
with  one !    Whenever  it  was  that  Xenophon  wrote  his  Anabasis 

1  Anah.  iv.  7,  21-27.  I  have  deliberately  tried  in  this  rendering  to 
keep  close  to  the  simplicity  and  structure  of  the  original,  but  perhaps 
have  been  too  bald  and  literal.  Mr.  Dakyns,  to  whose  translations  of 
Xenophon,  with  their  scholarly  introductions,  students  owe  much, 
always  seems  to  me  to  do  Xenophon  into  English  of  a  texture  a  good 
deal  sprucer  than  the  Greek. 


THE  ANABASIS  255 

— and  some  parts  of  it  were  written  years  after — the  fact  that 
stands  out  is  his  wonderful  gift  of  carrying  a  scene,  a  great 
moment,  a  conversation,  in  his  head ;  and  when  he  recalls  it, 
he  lives  it  over  again,  and  his  reader,  as  Plutarch  said,  lives 
through  it  with  him. 

The  sea  was  not  the  end  of  their  difficulties  by  any  means, 
but,  instead  of  difficulties,  let  us  turn  to  festivals.  When 
they  were  first  starting  on  their  long  march  against  the  Kmg, 
and  had  reached  Peltae,  Xenias,  the  Arcadian  captain  of  the 
body-guard  (who,  as  we  have  seen,  deserted  from  Mjnriandros), 
celebrated  the  Arcadian  festival  of  the  Lycaea  with  his  fellow- 
countrymen  ;  there  was  a  sacrifice,  and  then  athletic  contests, 
and  the  prizes  were  headbands  of  gold.  Cyrus,  we  are  told, 
went  to  watch,  and,  we  may  imagine,  Xenophon.i  Another 
festival  with  a  sacrifice  and  an  athletic  competition  was  held 
at  Trapezus  under  the  management  of  Dracontius,  a  Spartan, 
a  man  exiled  from  boyhood  for  killing  another  boy.  Captives 
took  part  in  one  race ;  Cretans,  sixty  of  them,  in  another ; 
there  was  wresthng,  boxing,  and  the  pancration — "  a  beautiful 
spectacle,"  ending  with  a  terrific  horse-race  downhill  to  the 
beach  and  up  again,  with  tumbles  and  shouting  and  laughter.  2 
Later  on,  when  they  made  peace  with  Corylas,  the  Paphla- 
gonian  chief,  the  Greek  generals  gave  an  entertainment  to  the 
ambassadors.^  They  had  plenty  of  captured  animals  for  food, 
they  lay  on  truckle  beds  at  dinner,  and  drank  from  horn-cups 
of  the  country's  make.  Then  came  the  libations  and  the 
paean,  and  "  first  of  all  some  Thrafcians  stood  up  and  danced 
to  the  flute,  in  full  armour,  leaping  high  into  the  air  and  very 
lightly,  and  used  their  swords  ;  and  finally  one  struck  the  other, 
as  it  appeared  to  everybody,  and  he  fell  with  great  art,  and  the 
Paphlagonians  cried  out.  Then  the  man  who  dealt  the  blow 
stripped  the  arms  off  the  fallen  man  and  went  out  chanting 
Sitalkas  (the  Thracian  King) ;  and  other  Thracians  carried 
out  the  other  man  as  if  dead,  though  really  he  had  suffered 
nothing.  Aenianians  and  Magnesians  followed,  and  danced 
the  Karpeia  under  arms  ;  and  this  is  the  method  of  the  dance. 
One  man  lays  aside  his  arms  and  sows  and  drives  a  yoke  of 
oxen,  often  looking  round  as  if  he  were  afraid ;  and  then  a 
robber  comes,  and  when  he  sees  him  he  snatches  up  his  arms 

1  Anab.  i.  2,  10.  ^  Anab.  iv.  8,  25-28.  ^  Anab.  vi.  i. 


256  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  runs  to  meet  him  and  fights  in  front  of  the  oxen — all  in 
rhythm,  to  the  flute  ;  and  finally  the  robber  binds  the  man 
and  drives  off  the  oxen,  or,  sometimes,  the  driver  binds  the 
robber  and  drives  him  along  with  the  oxen  with  his  hands  tied 
behind  him."  A  Mysian  came  next,  with  a  pantomimic  dance, 
as  if  he  were  fighting  two  men  at  once,  twirling  about,  with 
some  somersaults  thrown  in — "a  beautiful  sight" — which 
he  followed  up  with  the  Persian  dance  with  shields,  all  in 
rhythm,  to  the  flute.  He  was  succeeded  by  Arcadians  in 
national  dances,  also  under  arms,  as  they  do  it  in  procession 
to  the  gods.  The  Paphlagonians  were  surprised  to  see  such 
dances  under  arms ;  so  "  the  Mysian  talked  to  an  Arcadian 
who  owned  a  dancing  girl,  and  brought  her  on,  after  dressing 
her  with  the  utmost  beauty  and  giving  her  a  light  shield. 
She  danced  the  Pyrrhiche  very  gracefully.  There  was  much 
clapping,  and  the  Paphlagonians  asked  if  women  also  fought 
beside  them  in  battle,  and  they  answered  that  it  was  the 
women  who  drove  the  King  out  of  the  camp." 

The  skill  with  which  all  this  gaiety,  this  medley  of  national 
and  tribal  life  and  character,  the  snatches  of  natural  talk,  are 
woven  into  the  military  record  and  the  tale  of  adventure,  makes  it 
admirable  reading  and  gives  the  book  a  high  value.  We  lose  a 
great  deal  by  not  realizing  the  simpler  side  of  Greek  life,  and  the 
relations  of  the  Greek  with  his  neighbours.  No  book  that  the 
Greeks  have  left  us — not  even  Herodotus  himself — has  given  us 
quite  this  full  and  easy  range  over  the  fringes  of  the  Greek 
world  ;  and  we  have  yet  to  think  of  the  Euxine  and  of  Thrace. 

The  Greek  cities  of  the  Euxine  are,  in  a  way,  a  world  by 
themselves.  Stupendous  mountain  barriers  and  unconquer- 
able barbarian  tribes  were  a  safeguard  for  them  against  the 
Persian  Empire.  It  is  little  in  general  that  we  hear  of  them. 
Of  the  cities  on  the  northern  shore,  among  the  wheat  lands,  we 
hear  something — many  things,  indeed,  incidental  to  the  wheat 
trade  and  its  control  reach  us,^  but  the  first  real  picture  of 
life  in  these  regions  is  given  us  centuries  later  than  our  present 
period  by  Dio  Chrysostom,  in  one  of  the  two  really  charming 
sketches  that  he  has  left.^     He  pictures  an  old-world  place, 

1  Some  references  to  this  in  Chapter  X. 

^  Dio  Chrysostom,  Borystheniticos,  Or.  xxxvi.  (von  Arnim),  with 
which  Grote  deals  in  his  last  chapter.     The  other  to  which  I  refer  is 


THE  ANABASIS  257 

The  Greek  seems  to  have  been  cut  off  there  from  most  of  the 
main  currents  of  national  Ufe  and  to  have  kept,  as  French 
Canada  long  kept,  an  air  of  another  day.  Something  of  this 
may  be  due  to  Dio's  art,  just  as  a  parallel  study,  made 
three  centuries  later  still  by  Synesius,  of  life  in  the  back  parts 
of  the  Cyrenaica,  suggests  the  imitation  of  Dio  himself .^ 
In  the  fourth  and  third  centuries  young  men  from  Pontus 
(as  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter)  came  to  Athens  for  their 
education,  and  probably  did  not  return  home  quite  so  un- 
sophisticated as  the  attractive  lad  with  whom  Dio  discussed 
Homer.  It  is  likely  enough  that  they  preferred  not  to  return 
to  Scylhia  at  all.  But  the  northern  shore  does  not  come 
into  Xenophon's  story. 

What  invasion  by  an  army  of  some  10,000  hoplites,  with 
women  and  children  and  slaves, — suddenly  launched  over 
the  mountain  range  and  rolling  down  upon  them, — meant 
to  these  cities,  we  may  in  some  degree  imagine,  perhaps,  in 
the  light  of  modern  war,  but  the  ancients  were  less  scrupulous. 
Andrapodize  is  not  in  the  modem  vocabulary  of  warfare,  in 
any  language.  ^  One  can  only  guess  at  the  population  of 
Trapezus — what  could  it  be  ?  Twenty  thousand  people  made 
a  big  city — Bristol  or  Glasgow — in  the  days  of  the  Common- 
wealth. If  Trapezus  had  so  many  inhabitants,  away  at  the 
world's  end  all  by  itself,  its  nearest  Greek  neighbours  many 
miles  away,  the  disturbance  made  by  the  sudden  advent  of 
the  Ten  Thousand  must  have  been  terrible.  Adventurers 
one  and  all,  reckless  and  undisciplined,  newly  free  from 
desperate  perils,  eager  to  get  away  to  Greece  and  resolved 
never  to  return — there  was  no  predicting  what  they  might 
do.  Murder  and  pillage  on  a  small  scale  were  very  obvious ; 
the  utter  sacking  of  the  city  was  quite  possible.  What 
Xenophon  tells  us  of  the  doings  of  Clearetus  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Cerasus  and  of  the  disorder  and  danger  that  followed, 

the  Euboicos,  vii.,  for  which  see  the  Countess  Martinengo  Cesaresco's 
pleasant  book,  The  Outdoor  Life  in  Greek  and  Roman  Poets,  ch.  iv. 

^  Letter  148.  See  Life  and  Letters  in  the  Fourth  Century,  p.  334. 
Both  he  and  Dio  speak  of  Homer  as  the  sole  literature  of  these 
places. 

2  Cf.  Anah.  ii.  4,  27.  Tissaphernes  lets  the  Greeks  plunder  the  villages 
of  Parysatis  "nXriv  avbpaTrobatv — they  were  not  to  make  slaves  of  the 
people. 

17 


258  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

is  typical.^     We  can  understand  that  the  Greek  inhabitants 
of  the  scattered  cities  of  the  coast  were  eager  to  aid  their 
visitors  in  getting  away — even  to  the  extent  of  making  roads 
for  them  for  the  purpose,   on  Xenophon's  suggestion. ^     At 
Cotyora  the  soldiers  were  not  admitted  within  the  walls  at 
all — not  even  the  sick — though  they  lay  forty-five  days  out- 
side,^  and   no    opportunity   of    a    market   was  given  them. 
Sinope,  too,  the  suzerain  city  of  Cotyora,  sent  to  the  Greek 
generals  and  warned  them  that,  if  violence  were  used,  they 
themselves  might  be  forced  into  alliance  with  Corylas  and 
the  Paphlagonians — a  threat  withdrawn  on  the  expostulation 
of  Xenophon,*  though  anxiety  for  Sinope  was  read  plainly 
enough  in  the  advice  to  them  to  press  on  to  Herakleia  by  sea.^ 
At  Herakleia,  at  a  meeting  of  the  soldiers  an  Achaean  proposed 
that,   as  the  generals  fail  to  secure  them  provisions,  they 
resolve  to  demand    of   the    Herakleots  not  less  than  3000 
cyzicenes,    or   darics ;     an    amendment   was    accepted   sub- 
stituting   10,000 ;     and    Cheirisophos    or   Xenophon   was   to 
make  the  demand.     Both  men  stoutly  refused  such  a  task — 
they  would  be  no  parties  to  such  violence  to  a  friendly  Greek 
city.     Other  envoys  were  found,  less  scrupulous,  who  went 
to  Herakleia  with  the  demand,  reinforcing  it  with  a  threat. 
Herakleia,  not  unnaturally,  on  the  first  word  of  the  proposal 
put  all  her  defences  in  order.®    The  affair  had  miscarried,  and 
the  Arcadians  and  Achaeans  resolved  to  be  done  with  such 
spiritless  leaders  as  the  Athenian  and  the  Spartan,  who  really 
represented  no  numbers  at  all  in  the  army.    They  went  off 
in  a  body  by  themselves,  till  a  disaster  cured  them  of  their 
desire  for  independence  and  reconciled  them  for  the  time  to 
their  old  leaders,  who,  spiritless  as  they  were,  had  none  the 
less  rescued  them.'     At  Calpe  they  came  into  touch  with 
Spartan  authorities,  and  problems  of  another  colour.     But, 
before  we  consider  these,  there  are  other  matters  to  be  thought 
of,  which  will  take  us  back  to  Trapezus. 

When  the  Greeks  reached  the  Euxine  and  set  about  con- 
sidering how  they  were  to  move  forward,  a  man  from  Thurii 
carried  them  all  with  him  in  a  short  speech.     He  was  tired  of 

1  Anab.  v.  7,  13-26,  ^  Anab.  v.  i,  14. 

3  Anab.  v.  5,  6.  *  Anab.  v.  5,  7-25  ;   6,  3.  ^ 

5  Anab.  v.  6,  11.         '  Anab.  vi.  2,  4-8.  ''  Anab.  vi.  2,  9-3,  26, 


THE  ANABASIS  259 

it  all,  he  said — all  this  life  of  packing  one's  kit,  marching, 
running,  carrying  armour,  tramping  in  line,  and  mounting 
guard,  and  fighting.  He  wanted  to  be  quit  of  all. this  toil 
and  sail  home  like  Odysseus,  lying  full  length  on  a  ship,  and 
so  reach  Greece.  Every  one  agreed  ;  only  there  were  no  ships. 
Then  Cheirisophos  offered  to  go  ahead  and  see  Anaxibios, 
the  Spartan  navarch  who  was  a  friend  of  his,  and  get  triremes 
and  merchant  vessels  from  him,  if  they  would  wait  till  he 
returned,  and  he  would  not  be  slow.  So  Cheirisophos  was 
sent  on  this  errand,  which  took  him  longer  than  he  or  any 
one  else  expected.  Meantime  another  man,  a  Laconian 
perioikos,  Dexippos,  was  sent  off  on  a  penteconter  to  collect 
ships  also  ;  for  the  transport  of  10,000  people,  all  anxious  to 
travel  like  Odysseus,  involved  a  whole  fleet  of  one  kind  of 
ship  and  another.  Dexippos,  however,  was  tired  of  the 
whole  thing  too,  and  seized  his  chance  to  get  clear  of  the 
Ten  Thousand  ;  and  once  aboard  a  ship  in  his  own  charge 
he  went  away  for  good,  sailed  out  of  the  Euxine,  and  left  his 
comrades  to  get  home  as  they  might.  An  Athenian,  sent  on 
a  similar  errand,  brought  into  harbour  all  the  vessels  he  could 
get.  If  they  were  loaded,  the  Greeks  emptied  them,  and  set 
guards  over  the  cargo.  But  the  business  of  transport  was 
going  to  be  slow,  and  Dexippos  represented  a  very  general 
feeling. 

For  now  it  became  clear  that  everybody  had  the  same 
wish — if  it  were  only  practicable,  to  get  away  and  to  reach 
home.^  The  army  was  going  to  break  up  as  soon  as  it  con- 
veniently and  safely  could  do  it  ;  and  some  of  them  wished 
to  go  home  "  with  something."  ^  All  this  meant  danger — 
an  army  in  fragments  along  such  a  coast  engaged  in  looting 
was  bound  to  meet  disaster  ;  it  could  not  "  come  off  rejoicing."  ^ 
Yet  if  they  held  together,  what  lay  before  them  ?  The 
Spartans  ruled  at  that  time,  as  Xenophon  said,*  and  he  was 
genuinely  anxious  as  to  the  reception  they  might  have  from 
the  Spartans. 

Sparta's  support  of  Cyrus  had  compromised  her  with  the 
King,  and  the  army  of  Cyrus  was  a  force  that  she  could  neither 
very  well  do  with  nor  do  without.     To  enlist  them  would 

1  Cf.  Anah,  v.  6,  2,3  '<  also  vi.  2,  13-14.  ^  Anah.  vi.  i,  17. 

^  Anah.  v.  6,  32.  *  Anah,  vi.  5,  8-9,  rare  is  significant. 


26o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

involve  great  expense  ;  but  why  enlist  so  many  mercenaries 
at  all  in  time  of  peace  ?  men  would  ask.  It  would  be  a 
menace  to  some  state  or  other  ;  and  in  particular  the  Persian 
King,  in  view  of  the  fleet  sent  to  support  Cjnrus,  could  only 
regard  the  enlistment  of  Cyrus'  Greek  army  as  a  notice  of  some 
purpose  to  declare  war  upon  himself  or  his  dominions.  For 
this  Sparta  was  not  at  present  prepared  or  inclined.  On  the 
other  hand,  so  large  a  force  could  not  safely  be  left  to  wander 
intact  about  the  Greek  world,  and  still  less  could  it  be  allowed 
to  take  service  with  any  doubtful  or  hostile  power.  Anaxibios 
sent  Cheirisophos  back  to  his  men  with  nothing  but  a  polite 
message  and  a  vague  promise  of  enlistment  when  they  should 
arrive. 1  The  promise,  unaccompanied  by  any  ships,  could 
hardly  be  misunderstood  by  the  leaders.  The  Spartans  did 
not  want  them — at  any  rate  as  a  body — in  Greek  regions  ; 
they  would  prefer  to  see  them  stay  away  or  break  up.  But 
the  men  were  all  keen  to  reach  Greece,  and  to  break  up  would  be 
ruin — as  the  Arcadian  secession  showed. 

Some  of  the  soldiers  had  the  notion  that  they  were  strong 
enough  to  risk  a  quarrel  with  the  Spartan  rulers,  but  Xenophon 
assured  them  they  were  not.  Look  at  the  Athenian  Empire  and 
its  fleet,  compare  their  resources  with  those  that  Athens  had 
— it  was  absurd  ;  and  he  bent  every  endeavour  to  keeping 
the  peace. 2  Even  when  Aristarchos,  the  new  harmost  of 
Byzantium,  sold  as  slaves  no  less  than  four  hundred  of  the 
Cyreians — doing  it  on  the  advice  of  the  polite  Anaxibios  ^ — 
Xenophon,  in  spite  of  this  monstrous  outrage,  managed  to 
avert  any  breach.  The  act  was  typical  in  a  way  of  Spartan 
rule — the  extremest  oppression  and  violence  and  the  utter 
disregard  of  right  and  wrong — and  Xenophon' s  pages  make  it 
clear,  in  spite  of  his  long  friendship  with  Sparta,  how  bad  in 
every  way  her  predominance  was.  His  emphasis  on  the  power 
of  a  single  Spartan  in  a  city  *  reveals  to  what  the  fall  of  Athens 
had  brought  Greece.  There  was  even  some  danger,  as 
Xenophon  told  the  army,  in  their  being  commanded  by  an 
Athenian,  while  they  had  a  Spartan  with  them.^ 

When  one  surveys  the  difficulties  attending  their  return  to 
Greece,  the  alternative  plan  which  Xenophon  was  known  to 

1  Anab.  vi.  i,  i6.  ^  Anah.  vi.  6,  12-16  ;  vii.  i,  25-31. 

'  Anab.  vii.  2,  6.  *  Anab.  vi.  6,  12.  *  Anab.  vi.  i,  26. 


THE  ANABASIS  261 

favour,  becomes  interesting — a  plan  revived  and  carried  into 
execution  by  Alexander  the  Great.  He  reflected,  he  says,  upon 
their  numbers  ;  for  when  they  held  a  review  at  Cerasus,^  they 
still  numbered  8600,  after  losing  perhaps  a  quarter  of  their 
forces  in  battle,  in  snow  and  by  disease,  and  (here  and  there) 
by  desertion.  They  were  still  a  large  body  of  men,  hoplites, 
peltasts,  cavalry,  all  in  good  training — and  in  Pontus,  where 
such  a  force  could  hardly  be  raised  at  all.  "  It  seemed  to  him 
a  good  idea  to  found  a  city  and  acquire  new  territory  and  power 
for  Greece.  It  would  be,  he  thought,  a  great  city,  when  he 
considered  their  own  numbers  and  the  population  on  the  shores 
of  the  Euxine."  ^  So  he  consulted  the  gods.  Unfortunately, 
his  soothsayer  had  ideas  of  his  own  ;  a  successful  prophecy 
had  won  him  a  reward  of  3000  darics  from  Cyrus,  and  he  had 
managed  to  keep  them  through  all  the  risks  of  their  journey, 
and  he  wanted  to  get  home  to  Greece  with  them.^  So  he 
put  the  story  about  that  Xenophon  wished  to  hold  back  the 
army,  and  found  a  city,  and  get  himself  a  name  and  power. 
A  Dardanian  exile,  Timasion,*  who  also  had  plans  of  his 
own  and  dreamed  of  engaging  the  whole  arnly  to  regain  his 
native  place,  and  make  it  a  centre  of  conquest  or  pillage, 
took  pains  to  frustrate  his  chief  by  insinuating  to  the  mer- 
chants of  Herakleia  and  Sinope  that,  if  they  did  not  take 
prompt  measures  to  help  the  army  out,  Xenophon  meant  to 
stay  and  found  his  new  state,  perhaps  by  capturing  by  force 
some  existing  city.  The  story  went  all  along  the  coast,  as 
was  intended,  and  the  intrigue  prospered  in  the  army.  At  last 
Xenophon  had  to  defend  himself.  First  he  dealt  with  the 
prophet,  and  then  he  admitted  that  he  might  have  been  willing 
to  help  them  to  capture  a  city  ;  but  Herakleots  and  Sinopaeans 
were  now  furnishing  ships,  and  more  than  one  person  was 
guaranteeing  monthly  pay — well,  let  them  take  the  chance 
when  it  offered ;  the  colony  idea  was  abandoned ;  only  let 
them  keep  together  and  see  to  it  there  were  no  desertions — 
which  was  a  parting  shot  at  the  prophet.  ^  Even  so  the  matter 
was  not  settled,  and  Xenophon  had  to  defend  himself  a  little 

^  Anab.  v.  3,  3.  2  Anah.  v.  6,  15. 

^  Anab.  v.  6,  16-18  ;  i.  7,  18.  *  Anab.  v.  6,  23. 

^  Anab.  v.  6,  21-37.     The  prophet  managed  to  escape  on  a  merchant 
vessel  when  they  were  at  Heraldeia  (vi.  4,  13). 


262  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

later'^against  the  charge  of  plotting  to  take  the  whole  force 
back  to  Phasis  in  the  extreme  east  of  the  Black  Sea.  His 
speech  was  a  clever  and  a  witty  one  :  Greece,  they  all  knew, 
was  toward|  the  sunset ;  Phasis  toward  the  sunrise  ;  so  there 
could  be  no  mistake  as  to  where  they  were  going.  The  North 
Wind,  as  a  proverb  said,  took  you  out  of  Pontus  ;  so  they  had 
only  to  stay  ashore  when  the  South  Wind  blew ;  and  so  on ; 
and  he  passed  to  a  vindication  of  himself  and  a  plea  for  decent 
and  orderly  trust  and  co-operation.  The  soldiers  listened,  and 
resolved  to  be  done  with  lawlessness  ;  to  set  up  a  regular  court 
consisting  of  the  lochagoi,  or  captains,  which  might  deal  with 
accusations  made  in  a  more  orderly  way  than  was  possible 
with  stones  and  shouting ;  and  to  have  the  army  "  purified 
as  the  prophets  advised."  ^ 

So  there  was  to  be  no  new  colony  on  the  southern  shore 
of  Pontus,  though,  when  in  his  narrative  he  comes  to  Calpe, 
Xenophon  looks  back  wistfully  to  his  idea.  It  was  just  the 
very  spot,  midway  between  Byzantium  and  Herakleia,  and  not 
a  Greek  city  between  them — nothing  but  Bithynian  Thracians 
who  mishandle  every  Greek  sailor  who  falls  into  their  hands. 
A  fine  headland  juts  into  the  sea  and  makes  a  good  haven ; 
there  is  room  for  a  city  of,  say,  10,000  inhabitants — a  good 
water-supply,  commanded  by  the  stronghold,  shipbuilding 
timber  in  plenty  down  to  the  very  beach,  a  fertile  soil  round 
about  that  will  produce  barley,  wheat,  figs,  and  a  good  wine, 
everything,  in  short,  except  olives.  Olives,  as  we  have  seen 
already,  did  not  grow  round  the  Black  Sea,  but  were  imported. 
If  his  soldiers  would  not  hear  of  a  colony,  some  of  his  readers 
might  take  it  up.  In  any  case  it  is  interesting  to  find  Xeno- 
phon taking  the  lead  in  the  matter  of  fresh  colonization. 
Isocrates,  as  we  shall  see,  advocated  it  for  years  as  a  means  of 
dealing  with  Greek  poverty  and  of  getting  rid  of  the  swarms 
of  mercenaries  who  infested  the  world.  Alexander  and  his 
successors  carried  it  into  action.  Once  again,  if  Xenophon 
was,  as  we  have  seen  he  was,  the  real  inspirer  of  the  great 
retreat  that  proclaimed  the  weakness  of  Persia  and  invited 
the  Macedonian  conqueror,  here  again  he  is,  in  truth,  a  real 
herald  of  that  Hellenism  to  which  the  world  owes  so  much. 

When  the  colony  proved  impossible  and  return  to  Greece 
^  Anab.  v.  7,  1-35. 


THE  ANABASIS  263 

could  not  be  managed,  what  with  one  Spartan  governor  and 
another,  escape  suddenly  became  possible  in  a  totally  new 
direction.  Xenophon,  and  some  large  portion  of  the  Cyreians 
at  any  rate,  took  service  with  Seuthes  the  Thracian  prince  ; 
and  once  more  the  Anabasis  opens  for  us  a  wholly  new  and 
unique  chapter  on  a  part  of  the  outlying  world  of  which  we 
leam  very  little  from  any  other  author.  Some  tone  of  dis- 
appointment has  been  felt  in  this  Seventh  Book,  which  is  per- 
haps not  unnatural.  But  the  whole  goes  with  unflagging 
spirit,  and  for  variety  and  freshness  it  is  well  on  a  level  with 
the  rest  of  the  Anabasis. 

Mindful  of  their  long  journey  in  Asia,  the  Greeks  covenanted 
that  they  should  not  be  taken  more  than  seven  days'  march 
from  the  sea,  and  this  part  of  his  bargain  Seuthes  appears  to 
have  kept.  His  proposals  were  made  to  Xenophon  in  an 
interview  by  night.  Xenophon  with  a  small  body  of  men 
left  the  army,  and  after  going  sixty  stades  came  on  a  line  of 
apparently  abandoned  watch-fires,  behind  which,  well  in  the 
dark,  Seuthes'  men  were  watching.  The  interpreter  goes 
forward  ;  "  it  is  the  Athenian  from  the  army  ;  "  and  200  pel- 
tasts  escort  them  to  the  tower  where  Seuthes  waited,  well 
guarded,  with  horses  bitted  and  bridled  in  case  of  emergency. 
They  begin  conversation  with  horns  of  wine  in  the  Thracian 
way.  After  some  talk  Seuthes  says  he  cannot  distrust  an 
Athenian — they  are  kindred  of  his,  he  knows,  and  friends,  he 
thinks,  on  whom  he  can  rely.  His  father,  he  explains,  had 
been  king  or  chief,  but  when  "  the  fortunes  of  the  Odrysians 
fell  sick,"  he  died  (of  disease)  and  left  Seuthes  an  orphan,  with 
Medokos  the  present  king.  "  But  when  I  became  a  youth, 
I  could  not  endure  to  live  for  ever  looking  to  the  table  of  another. 
So  I  sat  on  his  seat  beside  him  as  a  suppliant  and  begged  for 
as  many  men  as  he  could  give  me,  to  do  any  mischief  I  might 
to  the  men  who  drove  me  out,  and  not  live  looking  at  his 
table.  So  he  gave  me  the  men  and  the  horses  you  shall  see 
at  daybreak.  And  now  I  live  with  these,  plundering  the  land 
that  belonged  to  my  own  fathers ;  and  if  you  will  join  me,  I 
think  that,  with  the  aid  of  the  gods,  I  could  get  my  kingdom 
again.  That  is  what  I  ask."  The  pay  promised  is  satisfactory. 
But,  if  we  cannot  manage  it,  and  "  fear  come  from  the  quarter 
of  the  Spartans,"  wUl  Seuthes  receive  any  of  them  who  comes 


264  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

for  refuge  ?  "  Yes,  like  brothers,  and  have  them  on  my  seat, 
to  share  all  we  can  get.  And  as  for  you,  Xenophon,  I  will  give 
you  my  daughter,  and  if  you  have  any  daughter  of  yours,  I  will 
buy  her  in  the  Thracian  way ;  and  I  will  give  you  Bisanthe 
to  dwell  in,  the  best  place  I  have  upon  the  sea." 

Bisanthe,  the  modern  Rodosto,  had  once  been  the  castle 
of  Alcibiades.  If  not  a  colony,  a  fortress,  some  foothold  on 
new  territory  for  Greece — that  seems  now  to  be  Xenophon's 
hope,  though  it  is  not  realized. 

Gomperz  for  the  moment  feels  it  disconcerting  to  find  the 
pious  pupil  of  Socrates  and  the  diligent  student  of  ethics 
laying  Thrace  waste  with  fire  and  sword,  and  burning  villages, 
at  the  bidding  of  Seuthes.  Long  centuries  after,  Samuel  Cham- 
plain  joined  himself  and  his  Frenchmen,  with  their  firearms,  to 
the  Hurons  in  a  similar  campaign  against  the  Iroquois,  with 
whom  he  and  his  had  till  then  no  quarrel  ;  and  French  Canada 
rued  it  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Greece  had  learnt  some- 
thing already  at  Mycalessos  of  Thracian  methods  of  warfare. ^ 
"  Next  day,"  says  Xenophon  at  a  stage  in  the  campaign, 
"  Seuthes  burnt  down  the  villages — utterly,  and  left  no  house 
standing,  to  put  terror  into  the  others  as  to  what  they  will 
undergo  if  they  do  not  submit."  ^  It  sounds  very  modern 
— as  we  have  come  to  reinterpret  modernity. 

We  need  not  follow  the  story  of  the  campaign.  It  was 
severe  even  for  the  Greeks  after  their  experiences  in  the  Armenian 
mountains.  "  There  was  much  snow  and  cold  so  great  that 
the  water  brought  in  for  dinner  froze,  and  the  wine  in  the 
vessels,  and  many  of  the  Greeks  had  their  noses  and  ears  frost- 
bitten. And  then  it  was  plain  why  the  Thracians  wear  fox- 
skin  caps  down  over  their  ears,  and  tunics  to  cover  not  only 
the  chest  but  the  thighs,  and  long  riding  cloaks  down  to  the 
feet,  instead  of  the  chlamys,  when  they  ride."  ^ 

The  banquet  of  Seuthes  is  a  pendant  to  those  we  have 
watched  elsewhere  in  the  story.*  The  guests  sit  in  a  circle, 
with  three-legged  stools  in  front  of  them,  on  which  is  pUed 
meat  and  bread  skewered  together.     Seuthes,  in  accordance 

^  Thuc.  vii.  29  :  --  The  Thracians  when  they  dare  can  be  as  bloody 
as  the  worst  barbarians  "  is  the  historian's  comment.  See  Chapter  III. 
p.  76. 

*  Anab,  vii.  4,  i.         ^  Anab.  vii.  4,  3,  4.         *  Anab.  vii.  3,  21-33. 


THE  ANABASIS  265 

with  the  fashion,  began  and  broke  up  his  bread  into  pieces  and 
threw  the  bits  to  whom  he  would,  and  the  meat  in  hke  manner  ; 
and  those  who  had  tables  by  them  copied  him — Arystas  the 
Arcadian  excepted,  who  soon  tired  of  it  and  fell  to  the  steady 
business  of  dinnei;,  too  busy  ever  to  drink.  "  Give  it  to 
Xenophon,"  he  said  to  the  cup-bearer;  "he's  ready;  I'm 
not."  The  cup-bearer  understood  Greek,  and  obeyed,  amid 
general  laughter.  As  the  drinking  went  on,  Thracians  came 
in  with  presents  for  the  chief,  one  with  a  white  horse,  which  after 
drinking  a  horn  of  wine  he  gave  to  him — another  with  a  slave — 
another  with  garments  for  Seuthes'  wife.  Timasion  the  Dar- 
danian  offered  a  silver  bowl  and  a  carpet  v/orth  ten  minae. 
Gnesippos  the  Athenian  rose  and  said  it  was  a  good  old  cus- 
tom for  those  who  had  to  give  to  the  king,  and  for  the  king 
to  give  to  those  who  had  not.  Xenophon  was  in  the  last  case, 
and  had  nothing  to  give,  but  when  the  horn  came  to  him  ("  he 
was  already  fairly  well  on  in  drinking,"  ^  he  says)  he  rose  and 
made  a  speech,  offering  the  king  himself  and  his  army,  by  whose 
aid  he  should  get  for  himself  lands  and  horses  and  men  and  fair 
women.  Seuthes  jumped  up  and  drained  the  horn  with  him, 
spilling  the  last  drops  in  the  Thracian  way.  Music  followed  of  the 
native  kind  on  horns  and  on  trumpets  of  ox-hide — music  of  a 
primeval  and  uncomplicated  style,  which  made  Seuthes  leap  up 
again  and  shout  for  battle,  and  do  a  war-dance  in  the  character 
of  one  dodging  a  javelin,  with  great  energy.  After  that  came 
clowns  and  jesters,  and  at  sunset  the  Greeks  rose  and  went  to 
their  camp — Seuthes  at  least  with  no  signs  of  drink  about  him. 
Such  is  life  in  Thrace,  but  there  are  the  beginnings  of  law 
and  order  and  civilization,  for  they  mark  out  the  seashore  of 
the  Euxine  with  landmarks  to  regulate  where  a  man  may,  and 
where  he  should  not,  loot  a  wreck  driven  ashore.  For  want  of 
this,  in  old  days,  there  had  been  robbery  and  fighting  and  loss 
of  life.  In  those  regions  the  Greeks  found  beds  and  boxes,  and 
a  great  many  manuscripts,  and  all  the  things  that  sea-captains 
carry  in  their  chests. 

^  vii.  3,  29,  ^'8rf  yap  VTroTreirccKms  irvyxavev — a  phrase  familiar  in 
Aristophanes,  e.g.  Peace,  874.  Perhaps  the  Irish  distinction  (which  I 
borrow  from  Some  Reminiscences  of  an  Irish  R.M.)  achieves  what  is 
meant — "  not  dhrunk,  but  having  dhrink  taken."  It  is  an  interesting 
admission  to  find  Xenophon  making. 


266  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

There  were  difficulties  about  the  pay  that  Seuthes  promised, 
which  need  not  delay  us.  But  by  now  Sparta  had  come  to 
open  war  with  Tissaphernes,  if  not  with  Persia,  and  the  army 
of  Cyrus  was  no  longer  a  dreaded  incubus  but  a  welcome  re- 
inforcement. The  Cyreians  crossed  once  more  to  Asia  and 
took  service  with  Thibron.  With  them  went  Xenophon, 
and  five  years  of  desultory  war  lay  before  them,  before  they 
marched  home  with  Agesilaos  by  the  route  that  Xerxes  took, 
with  camels  in  their  train. ^ 

If  I  have  to  offer  an  apology  for  a  chapter  on  a  book  so 
obvious  as  the  Anabasis,  it  is  a  simple  one.  It  was  the  first 
book  in  Greek  prose  that  I  ever  read — painfully  and  slowly  a 
chapter  or  two  was  crawled  through,  and  then  the  book  was 
abandoned  for  years.  Many  of  my  readers  will  perhaps  have 
the  same  dreary  memory  of  it.  And  then  after  years  I  found 
out  what  a  good  story  it  was,  and  came  to  see  how  at  point 
after  point  it  is  not  merely  interesting,  but  illuminative — one  of 
the  very  clearest  and  strongest  interpretations  of  Greek  life 
ever  written. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  24.  Cf.  Herodotus,  vii.  S6  ;  Aristophanes, 
Birds,  276  f . 


CHAPTER    I|X 
THE  NEW  AGE 

IN  October  1777  the  news  reached  London  of  the  defeat 
of  British  arms  at  Saratoga.  Sir  John  Sinclair,  who  is 
described  as  the  prince  of  busybodies,  heard  of  it  and 
brought  word  to  Adam  Smith,  exclaiming  in  the  deepest  concern 
that  the  nation  was  now  ruined.  Adam  Smith  was  less  disturbed. 
"  There  is  a  great  deal  of  ruin  in  a  nation,"  he  said.  He 
was  right ;  nations  are  oftener  ruined  in  the  newspapers  than 
they  are  in  history,  and  if  they  are  ruined,  it  takes  more  than 
a  day  to  do  it.  Yet,  as  we  have  seen  in  an  earlier  chapter,  a 
day  may  mark  the  close  of  one  epoch  and  the  beginning  of 
another  ;  it  may  bring  home  alike  to  contemporaries  and  to 
after  generations  that  a  new  age  has  begun,  of  grandeur,  it 
may  be,  or  of  decline.  The  battle  of  Salamis  marks  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  age  of  the  one  kind,  the  day  of  Aegospotami 
of  the  other.  The  fourth  century  is  quite  another  thing  from 
the  fifth  ;  it  is  the  age  of  PhiUp  and  Alexander,  not  of  Pericles 
and  Alcibiades  ;  and  by  the  time  it  ends,  our  thoughts  are 
far  away  from  the  centres  that  held  them  in  the  fifth  century,  we 
are  with  Ptolemy  and  Seleucus,  in  Alexandria  and  Babylon, 
face  to  face  with  a  new  world,  a  new  civilization,  new  concep- 
tions of  government,  and  new  ideals  of  conduct.  Demos  of  the 
Pnyx  is  an  odd  memory  of  the  past ;  and  Athens,  which  after 
all  meant  Greece  for  us — ^her  empire  is  long  gone,  and  Rhodes 
is  capturing  her  trade  ;  she  is  a  fortress,  a  university,  a  city 
of  monuments  and  tourists  ^ — a  sort  of  Oxford  ;  and  when  she 
counts  in  history  it  is  as  a  make-weight,  magni  nominis  umbra. 
With  Athens,  somehow,  as  almost  every  student  of  history 
feels,  something  else  goes — 

A  Power  is  passing  from  the  earth 
To  breathless  Nature's  dark  abyss. 

^  Isocrates,  Areop.  66,  on    the  impression   made  upon  visitors  to 
Athens  by  the  great  buildings  of  the  Periclean  period. 

267 


268  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

As  a  brilliant  scholar  of  to-day  puts  it  :  "  There  is  something 
wrong  with  the  fourth  century.  The  greatest  charm  of  its 
predecessor  is  too  volatile  for  language.  It  is  the  fullness  and 
beauty  of  Athenian  life.  After  400  B.C.  that  is  gone.  It 
fades  out  of  Athens,  leaving  her  ostensibly  unchanged,  just 
as  the  expression  which  gave  all  the  charm  to  a  face  fades 
out  of  it  without  any  definite  alteration  of  the  features." 
So  writes  Mr.  Livingstone.^  Julius  Beloch,  on  the  other  hand, 
one  of  the  freshest  and  most  vigorous  minds  that  have  dealt 
with  Greek  history  in  our  times,  holds  another  view.^  He 
admits  that  the  gloomy  social  and  political  conditions  of  the 
fifty  years  that  followed  the  fall  of  Athens  give  a  semblance 
of  truth  to  the  view  that  the  bloom  of  Greece  is  over — "  yes, 
but  for  him  only  whose  gaze  is  on  the  surface  of  things  or  who 
confuses  Athens  with  Greece.  ''•JFot  hini  who  will  go  deeper, 
the  fourth  century  shows  another  picture.  He  sees  fresh  life 
in  all  directions  ;  and,  if  the  nation  was  sick,  it  was  really 
from  fullness  of  life,  struggling  for  expression.  Never  before 
or  after  did  Greece  produce  so  great  a  number  of  political  and 
military  capacities  ;  while  in  literature,  art,  and  science  a 
forward  movement  reigned  of  the  most  vigorous  and  most 
rich  in  results." 

It  depends  on  what  we  are  looking  for,  and  (to  some  extent) 
where  we  look  for  it.  The  eighteenth  century  in  England  is 
a  very  different  story  from  the  seventeenth — no  Milton,  no 
Prince  Rupert,  no  Pilgrim  Fathers  ;  Adam  Smith  seems  much 
more  characteristic  of  it  than  the  Young  Pretender  ;  science 
and  sense  are  in  the  ascendant,  and  poetry,  apart  from  echo- 
work,  there  is  none  till  the  Task  was  published  in  1785  and 
Lyrical  Ballads  in  1798.  Yet  England,  if  less  interesting  to 
the  student  of  imaginative  literature,  especially  if  he  limits 
himself  to  poetry,  had  in  many  ways  never  been  at  all  so  great. 
But  there  is  no  denying  that  to  most  human  beings  the  century 
between  the  deaths  of  Queen  Mary  and  of  Oliver  Cromwell 
means  incomparably  more.  The  parallel  here  suggested  with 
fourth-century  Greece  may  be  carried  further  and  may  give 

^  In  his  admirable  book,  The  Greek  Genius  and  its  Meaning  to  Us, 
p.  239. 

^  Griechische  Geschichte,  ii.  ^6^.  I  plead  guilty  to  compressing  one 
sentence  rather  than  translating  it. 


THE  NEW  AGE  269 

us  some  clue.  Those  hundred  years  in  England  are  years  of 
boundless  life  and  energy — every  man  seems  instinct  with 
force,  and,  as  suggested  before,^  every  man  seems  to  have  a 
grip  upon  all  life,  to  understand  the  whole  ;  he  may  see  it 
from  an  angle — then  every  other  man  shall  see  it  from  that 
same  angle  too.  There  is  clash  of  opinion  endlessly  and  fiercely ; 
and  England  and  the  world  gain  by  it,  for,  as  Milton  said, 
"  opinion  in  good  men  is  but  knowledge  in  the  making." 
There  are  wars  for  religion,  with  the  Spaniard  and  the  Pope 
abroad,  with  the  King  and  the  bishops  and  others  at  home — 
"  and,"  as  the  humorous  Burton  sighs,  "  all  for  the  peace  of 
thee,  O  Zion  !  "  And  then  there  is  a  change  when  Charles  II 
comes  home  again.  There  is  no  longer  any  national  glory 
which  the  King  will  not  sell,  till  a  new  King  is  fetched  from 
Holland.  There  is  no  poetry — except  a  couple  of  epics  written 
by  a  blind  survivor  of  the  old  days.  And  England  wants  to 
hear  very  little  more  about  religion  ;  let  her  only  have  tolera- 
tion and  be  done  with  the  quarrels  of  churches.  Let  her  get 
to  business,  and,  forgoing  raptures  and  ideals  and  enthusiasms, 
let  her  see  facts.  So  to  facts  England  turned — to  trade,  and 
built  up  a  new  commercial  system,  and  laid  the  foundations 
of  a  Canadian  Dominion  and  an  Indian  Empire  ;  to  science 
and  philosophy — and  Newton  and  Locke  taught  Europe  to 
think,  and  the  Royal  Society  became  an  integral  part  of 
national  life  ;  to  comfort,  and  the  nineteenth  century  became 
possible.  Afterwards,  because  England  was  a  nation,  and 
not  a  city,  other  things  followed.  A  man,  according  to 
Isocrates,^  may  escape  some  things  because  of  the  accidents 
of  life,  but  a  city  has  a  certain  immortality  which  makes 
inevitable  the  consequences  of  her  acts.  A  man  may  miss 
much  by  early  death,  but  even  a  city  has  nothing  like  the 
immortality  of  a  nation.  With  this  in  mind  we  may  compare 
and  contrast  the  story  of  Athens  with  that  of  our  own  country. 

Athens  had  her  great  century — her  century  of  victory 
over  Persian  and  islander,  of  empire  over  the  sea  and  com- 
merce, of  leadership  in  everything  that  makes  human  life,  in 
art,  literature,  music,  all  the  preoccupations  and  interests  of 
mind  and  spirit.  Her  huge  ideals  became  incompatible  with 
the  peace  of  the  world.    "  They  are  the  sort,"  said  the  Corin- 

1  See  Chapter  II.  p.  38.  ^  p^  p^ce,  120. 


270  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

thian  speaker,  "  that  can  never  have  quiet  themselves,  nor 
let  other  men  have  it."  ^  The  weariness  that  came  to  England 
from  civil  war  came  to  Athens  from  foreign  war.  Here 
.perhaps  it  helped  England  that  she  is  a  nation  that  tires 
quickly  of  the  strain  of  thought,  in  spite  of  Milton's  glowing 
belief  to  the  contrary.  The  day  came  when  the  foreigner 
imposed  by  force  upon  Athens  the  peace  she  needed.  Cleon 
had  taunted  the  people,  who  followed  him  into  extravagance 
only  too  readily,  with  being  "  slaves  of  fancy,"  with  "  always 
seeking  something  different  from  the  conditions  under  which 
we  have  to  live  " — with  being  idealists  in  short. ^  In  the  fourth 
century,  in  spite  of  the  regrets  of  thinking  people  that  the 
Demos  is  still  at  the  mercy  of  clever  demagogues  and  un- 
scrupulous generals,  the  dominant  note  of  Athens  is  the  exact 
opposite  of  what  Cleon  said  it  was  in  his  day.  As  far  as  so 
bright  a  people  could,  in  weariness  they  renounced  the  ideal 
world  for  the  actual  and  concentrated  themselves  on  "  the 
conditions  under  which  we  have  to  live."  The  sense  of  fact 
is  the  dominant  thing  in  the  life  and  thought  ci  ihe  whole 
period  ;  and  to  trace  its  influence  and  its  manifestations  is 
the  matter  we  now  have  in  hand. 

iThe  Peloponnesian  War  took  out  of  Athens  far  more  than 
any  modem  war  takes  out  of  a  modern  nation.  First  as  to 
losses  in  battle  and  the  like,  Isocrates,  rehearsing  the  cost  of 
the  Imperial  idea  to  Athens,  passes  from  the  old  disasters  of 
Egypt  and  Cyprus  to  the  Peloponnesian  War  and  mentions 
two  of  them.  "  In  Sicily  they  lost  40,000  men  and  240  triremes ; 
and  finally  at  the  Hellespont  200  triremes.  And  the  ships 
that  were  lost  by  tens  and  fives  and  more,  and  the  men  that 
died  by  the  thousand  and  two  thousand,  who  could  count  ? 
Only  this  was  one  of  the  regular  duties,  to  hold  a  public  burial 
for  them  every  year,  to  which  many  from  the  neighbouring 
cities  and  from  the  other  parts  of  Greece  used  to  come,  not  to 
join  us  in  mourning  the  dead,  but  to  exult  together  in  our  mis- 
fortunes. .  .  .  The  families  of  the  most  famous  men  and  the 
greatest  houses,  that  survived  the  revolution  against  the  tyrants 
and  the  Persian  War,  we  shall  find,  disappeared  in  the  time 

1  Thuc.  i.  70,  9. 

2  Thuc.  iii.  38,  5,  80CX01  owes  rav  dr6Tra>v,  .  .  .  7>  Cv'^^^'''^^  '''^  «XXo  rt  as 
etirelv  rj  iv  ois  C^fiev,      Cf .  p.  74- 


THE  NEW  AGE  271 

of  the  Empire  ;  "  and  he  laments  that  on  the  burgess  rolls 
in  their  stead  are  the  names  of  foreigners  from  all  sorts  of 
places.^  So  he  wrote  some  fifty  years  after  Aegospotami — an 
old  man  recalling  what  he  remembered  too  well  from  boyhood 
and  youth  ;  and  he  emphasizes  how  near  the  survivors  came 
to  being  sold  for  slaves  and  Athens  to  disappearing  for  ever. 
In  the  second  place  we  have  to  remember  the  great  plague 
in  the  early  part  of  the  war,  which  cost  Athens,  Eduard  Meyer 
calculates,  something  like  17,000  soldiers,  and  cost  her  more 
still  in  spirit,  Mr,  Zimmern  suggests — "  the  old  hope  and 
reverence  and  self-discipline  and  joy  had  passed  away  as  in  a 
dream."  It  may  be  too  that  in  these  years,  as  Mr.  W.  H.  S. 
Jones  has  maintained,  malaria  became  endemic  in  Greece,  a 
constant  drain  on  the  nation's  vitality. 

Industry,  too,  on  which,  as  agriculture  declined  in  Attica, 
Athens  relied  more  and  more,  was  terribly  affected  by  the  long 
strain  of  the  war.     Everything  had  to  be  sacrificed  to  ship- 
building, and  fleet  after  fleet  was  lost.^The  capital  expended 
on  ships  must  have  run  into  thousands  of  talents.     We  do  not 
hear  in  the  fourth  century  of  the  great  sums  the  city  reckoned 
up  so  confidently  before  the  war.     Piracy  rose  as  the  Athenia 
fleet  declined,  and  the  Spartan  rulers  never  seem  to  have  deal 
very  effectively  with  it ;   it  meant  much  less  to  an  inland  an. 
agricultural  state.     The  occupation  of  Deceleia  during  the  lai 
nine  years  of  the  war  meant  the  stripping  of  Attica  of  every- 
thing that  could  be  carried   away,  down  to  the  tiles  of  the 
farm-house  roofs. ^     More  serious  still,   "  more  than  twenty 
thousand  slaves  deserted,   many  of  them  artisans."  ^      The 
industries  of  Athens  and  the  mining  in  Laureion  depended  on 
slave  labour.     Add  to  all  this  the  crowding  to  Athens  of  citizens 
from  the  lost  dependencies  and  clerucMes,  stripped  of  every- 
thing.^ \ 

An  Interesting  chapter  in  Xenophon's  Memorabilia  ^  tells 
how  Socrates  met  a  friend  towards  the  end  of  the  troubles  under 

1  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  86-89. 

2  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  12,  3,  4.  .    ^  Thuc.  vii.  27,  5. 

*  Cf .  Xen.  Mem.  ii.  8,  i.  -*  We  lost,"  says  Eutheros,  '-our  pos- 
sessions outside  the  country,  and  my  father  left  nothing  whatever  in 
Attica.  So  now  I  am  come  back,  I  am  driven  to  work  with  my  hands 
to  get  food." 

*  Xen.  Mem,  ii.  7,  1-12. 


272  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  Thirty,  and  remarked  on  his  gloom.  Yes,  he  was  gloomy  ; 
sisters  and  nieces  and  cousins  have  crowded  in  on  him,  till  they 
are  fourteen  of  them,  free  persons,  at  home  ;  the  enemy  holds 
the  land,  and  nothing  comes  from  thence  ;  house-property  in 
Athens  will  not  let — the  city  is  empty  ;  there  is  no  selling  the 
furniture,  and  as  for  a  loan,  "  I  think  one  would  be  likely  to  find 
money  lying  in  the  street  quicker  than  to  borrow  it."  Socrates 
urges  him  to  set  all  these  women  to  work  ;  they  can  spin  and 
weave,  and  people  will  buy  garments.  And  the  story  ends  with 
wool  being  bought,  the  women  getting  to  work  and  brightening 
up,  till,  as  Aristarchus  tells  Socrates,  they  chaff  him  with 
being  the  only  idle  person  in  the  house.  The  story  is  interesting 
in  several  ways  ;  for  our  purposes  it  is  a  little  picture  of  the 
straits  to  which  the  whole  nation  was  reduced  and  a  hint  of 
how  it  recovered.  The  walls  were  gone,  but  the  harbours  were 
left ;  ^  Athens  was  still  in  the  centre  of  the  Greek  world  ; 
winds  and  currents  remained  the  same  ;  and  when  peace  was 
restored,  commerce  began  to  follow  its  old  lines  and  they  led 
to  Athens.  2 

Athens  regained  her  commercial  supremacy  over  the  Greek 
world,  but  her  empire  was  gone.  She  lay  at  the  mercy  of  her 
enemies,  for  the  long  walls  that  linked  her  to  the  Peiraieus 
were  destroyed,  and  for  ten  years  she  was  compulsorily  kept 
at  peace  with  the  world.  Then  Conon,  after  his  years  of  exile, 
came  back  in  the  character  of  a  victorious  Persian  admiral  ^ 
and  persuaded  Pharnabazos  to  re-build  the  walls — "  no  heavier 
blow,  he  knew,  could  be  dealt  to  the  Spartans. "  *  "  He  won  the 
sea-battle,"  says  Isocrates,  "  and  hurled  the  Spartans  from 
their  dominion,  and  freed  the  Greeks  ;  not  only  did  he  build 
the  walls  of  his  country,  but  he  raised  the  city  to  the  glory  from 
which  she  had  fallen."  ^  So  says  the  patriot ;  but  it  was  not 
quite  the  old  glory.     The  essential  fact  was  that  the  world  had 

1  In  a  tideless  sea  like  the  Mediterranean  a  harbour  was  a  harbour 
and  had  no  rival  in  the  river-mouth  that  could  be  a  harbour  at  high 
tide.  Cf.  Forbes  and  Ashford,  Our  Waterways,  p,  145,  on  the  almost 
incredible  differences  that  tide  makes. 

2  Isocrates,  Panath.  (342  b.c.)  §57,  boasts  of  Athens  iv  eXdrroa-iv 
ereinv  dvdKaj3ov(Tav  avT-qv  rj  KaTeij-dXefirjdrj,  On  commerce,  see  further 
Chapter  X.  generally,  and  Chapter  XII.  p.  364. 

^  Diodorus,  xiv.  81,  Kdi/mi'  fie  6  rav  Tlepcrmv  vavapxos.  •   .  . 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  8,  9.  ^  Isocrates,  Philip,  64. 


THE  NEW  AGE  273 

undergone  a  great  change — a  greater  change  by  far  than  the 
substitution  of  a  Spartan  for  an  Athenian  Empire.  The  centre 
of  gravity  had  shifted,  and  it  took  time  to  find  it.  By  386, 
when  Athens  reluctantly  and  Sparta  triumphantly  signed  the 
King's  Peace,  it  was  plain  that  the  world's  centre  of  gravity  lay 
outside  Greece — ^hundreds  of  miles  away,  in  Susa.  Still  it  was 
not  clear  that  it  need  ;  for  first  Xenophon  with  the  Ten 
Thousand,  and  then  Agesilaos,  had  shown  that  Persia  was  not  a 
strong  power  ;  and  the  question  rose  as  to  where  the  next  shift 
would  be.  The  city-state  was  not  to  be  the  centre  of  every- 
thing ;  and  men  somehow  felt  it  and  began  to  turn  to  what 
interested  them  more.^  In  that  sentence  perhaps  lies  the  most 
signal  change  of  all. 

The  Spartans  had  imposed  upon  Athens,  as  upon  other 
places,  a  government  entirely  to  Lysander's  mind.  But,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  Thirty  fell  and  Democracy  on  the  familiar 
lines  took  their  place,  to  hold  it  with  a  surer  tenure  than  ever. 
It  was  not  that  men  were  necessarily  better  pleased  with 
Democracy  than  before,  but  that,  as  it  was  with  the  Republic 
in  France  in  the  seventies,  it  was  "  the  government  that  divides 
us  least."  Historians  are  agreed  that  the  hopeless  failure, 
first  of  the  Four  Hundred,  and  then  of  the  Thirty,  had  dis- 
credited for  generations  every  idea  of  oligarchy.  Thirty  or 
four  hundred  or  five  thousand — it  was  all  one  ;  no  "  Con- 
stitution," which  limited  or  moderated  or  in  any  way  tampered 
with  Democracy  had  a  chance.  In  their  few  months  the 
Thirty  had  killed  fifteen  hundred  people. ^  Henceforth  there 
was  no  alternative  to  Democracy,  and  even  moderates  like 
Xenophon  recognized  the  fact  and  accepted  it.^  That  they 
should  be  hearty  in  their  acceptance  of  the  rule  of  the  Ecclesia, 
was  too  much  to  ask  in  reason  ;  they  accepted  it,  and  put  up 
with  its  exactions,  liturgies,  trierarchies,  festivals,  and  law- 
courts  ;  but  they  might  fairly  ask  to  be  allowed  to  give  their 
minds  to  what  interested  them  more. 

It  was  long,  however,  before  all  echoes  of  the  quarrel  between 
the  City  and  the  Peiraieus  died  away.  As  late  as  382  there  are 
traces  of  it  in  the  speeches  of  Lysias.     Lysias,  of  course,  and  his 

1  Cf.  the  lines  of  Euripides  quoted  by  Callicles  in  Plato,  Gorg. 
484E. 

2  Isocrates,  Areop.  67.  ^  Cf.  Beloch,  Gy.  Gesch.  ii.  192. 

18 


274  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

family  had  suffered  heavily  under  the  Thirty.  Anyone  who 
wishes  to  realize  with  what  Thrasybulus  and  the  leaders  of  the 
restored  Democracy  had  to  contend,  has  only  to  read  some  of 
Lysias'  speeches.  They  mark  an  epoch  in  the  development 
of  Greek  prose.  Long  afterwards  Dionysius  of  Halicamassus 
set  about  analysing  the  literary  gifts  of  Lysias — the  purity 
of  his  language,  his  clearness — ^his  power  of  being  lucid  and 
brief  at  the  same  moment — his  vivid  way  of  bringing  scene 
and  character  before  your  eyes  alive,  with  no  loss  of  passion 
or  feeling,  and  yet  naturally  and  simply — "  he  makes  things 
look  serious  and  impressive  and  great,  and  yet  he  uses  the  most 
ordinary  terms  and  has  no  hint  of  poetic  furniture  ...  he 
seems  to  talk  exactly  like  any  ordinary  person,  while  all  the 
time  he  is  utterly  unlike  any  ordinary  person."  With  this  easy 
style,  "  so  free  from  artifice  that  he  seems  to  speak  without 
preparation  and  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,"  he  tells  the  court 
the  tale  of  the  Thirty,  and  brings  out  the  share  of  Eratosthenes 
or  Agoratos  in  those  deeds  of  tyranny  and  murder,  till  the 
reader  wonders  how  any  Athenian  court  could  resist  the  infer- 
ence and  the  appeal  that  come  of  themselves  from  the  facts  so 
plainly  and  movingly  stated  ;  and  as  he  wonders  there  comes  to 
him  a  new  sense  of  the  greatness  of  the  achievement  of  Thrasy- 
bulus and  his  friends.  "  They  took  oaths  that  there  should  be 
amnesty,"  says  Xenophon  in  his  quiet  way,  "  and  to  this  day 
they  live  together  under  one  constitution,  and  Demos  abides 
by  his  oaths  " — a  testimony,  as  a  German  historian  says,  the 
more  honourable  to  the  Demos,  the  further  removed  the  writer 
himself  is  from  the  democratic  standpoint.  The  policy  was 
sense,  moderation,  reconciliation  ;  and  it  was  triumphant. 

The  two  most  prominent  names  are  those  of  Thrasybulus 
and  Archinos.  They  were  together  at  Phyle,  and  they  worked 
together  in  the  reconstruction.  To  them  we  may  attribute 
the  resolution  that  the  People  repay  to  Sparta  the  hundred 
talents  the  Thirty  borrowed  for  the  people's  undoing — a 
master-stroke  in  reconciliation,  even  if  Spartan  pressure 
helped  it  through.^     Archinos,   however,   checked  the  plan 

1  For  the  hundred  talents,  see  Demosthenes,  Lept.  12  ;  Isocrates, 
Areop.  68-69  >  Plut.  Lysander,  21.  Lysias,  Erat.  59,  says  the  loan 
was  to  hire  mercenaries,  and  they  hired  '■  everybody — whole  cities  of 
them." 


THE  NEW  AGE  275 

of  Thrasybulus  for  enfranchising  the  loyal  metics  at  once  and 
in  a  block.  Citizenship  since  the  days  of  Pericles  meant  not 
merely  service  of  the  state  but  claim  on  the  state  ;  and  it  was 
perhaps  not  wise  to  create  too  many  claims  in  a  hurry. 
Archinos'  readiness  of  resource  served  Athens  well  in  the 
critical  days,  and  his  invention  of  the  paragraphe  (demurrer) 
put  an  effectual  check  on  the  dangers  of  the  law  courts  and 
helped  to  make  the  amnesty  a  reality.  One  characteristic 
thing  that  he  did  was  the  carrying  of  a  law  to  substitute 
the  Ionic  for  the  Attic  alphabet  in  Athenian  inscriptions — 
emphatically,  an  act  of  common  s'^  ise,  and  "  a  significant 
symptom  of  the  impulse  to  unity,  vigorous  in  the  race."  ^ 

Thrasybulus  is  the  more  outstanding  figure — the  leader 
in  the  movement  on  Phyle  and  in  the  fighting  in  the  Peiraieus 
— the  man  who  brought  back  the  people,  and  who  led  them 
for  years,  till  Conon,  with  his  victory  of  Cnidos,  his  Persian 
gold,  and  his  restoration  of  the  walls,  outshone  him.  He  had 
undergone  heavy  losses  in  the  bad  days,  and  he  knew  who  were 
responsible  for  them,  yet,  as  Isocrates  points  out  in  401  B.C., 
for  all  his  power  in  the  city  he  respected  the  amnesty,  and  did 
not  ask  more  than  any  other  citizen. ^  But  the  extremists 
did  not  like  him.  Lysias,  writing  for  Mantitheos,  just  after 
the  battle  of  Corinth  (394  B.C.),  represents  his  client,  in  spite 
of  the  losses  to  his  tribe  and  the  many  killed,'  as  "  retreating 
after  the  impressive  Steirian,  who  taunts  everybody  with 
cowardice."  ^  There  was  another  rather  conspicuous  Thrasy- 
bulus of  Colly tos,*  so  the  demes  had  to  be  used  to  distinguish 
them  ;  but  the  omission  of  the  statesman's  own  name  and  the 
addition  of  the  adjective  show  malice.  There  was  plenty 
of  malice,  though  perhaps  it  was  not  always  so  silly  as  when 
"  another  Dionysius  "  was  detected  in  Thrasybulus — a  tyrant 
of  the  Syracusan  type  in  the  liberator  !  ^  His  last  great 
service  to  Athens  was  the  naval  expedition  of  389,  when  he 
set  up  a  democracy  in  Byzantium,  and  made  allies  of  Chalcedon 

1  On  the  work  of  Archinos,  see  'A^.  IIoX.  40  ;  Isocrates,  18,  c.  Callim. 
(a  speech  on  a  paragraphe,  explaining  and  illustrating  it  admirably)  ; 
Aeschines,  c.  Ctes.  195  ;  Demosthenes,  Timocr.  135.  The  alphabet, 
Theopompus,  Frag.  149,  and  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  526-527. 

2  Isocrates,  18,  c.  Callim.  24.  ^  Lygias,  16,  pro  Mant.  15. 
*  Lysias,  26,  23  ;   Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  i,  27. 

^  Cf.  Aristophanes,  Eccles.  203,  Plutus,  550. 


276  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  Mitylene,  beside  reconciling  Seuthes  the  Thracian  King 
and  Amedokos  the  Odrysian  to  each  other,  and  making  both 
friends  of  Athens.  And  then  he  was  killed  in  his  tent  by  night 
in  some  quarrel  of  soldiers.  Meantime  the  extremists  had 
deposed  and  recalled  him,  and  superseded  him  with  Agyrrhios, 
the  democrat  hero  of  the  three  obols.^  "  He  did  well  to  die 
so,"  cried  Lysias,  "  for  it  was  not  fitting  for  him  to  live  with 
such  designs  as  his  on  foot,  nor  to  die  at  your  hands  in  view 
of  the  good  he  appears  to  have  done  you  in  old  days."  It  is 
such  utterances  that  make  Athenian  democracy  of  this  period 
repulsive  and  serve  to  explain  why  people  went  abroad  or 
kept  aloof  from  national  life.  Thucydides  indeed  makes  it 
quite  plain  that  generosity  to  those  who  served  it  and  who 
failed  had  never  been  a  mark  of  the  Athenian  state.  Still, 
injustice  so  flagrant  as  this  to  Thrasybulus  was  a  new  thing — 
if  we  may  leave  the  case  of  Themistocles  undecided.  It  is 
Xenophon  who  keeps  the  fame  of  Thrasybulus  alive  for  ever, 
and  here  his  quiet  word  suffices  :  "so  died  Thrasybulus,  a 
good  and  great  man  by  all  admission — avrjp  ajaOo';."  2 

With  Thrasybulus  was  associated  Anytos.^  Isocrates 
praised  them  together  for  their  disinterested  patriotism  in 
401 ;  whether  he  would  have  done  so  a  few  years  later  is 
another  question.  For  Anjrtos  is  known  to  history  as  the 
man  who  prosecuted  Socrates  on  the  charges  of  not  accepting 
the  gods  of  the  city,  of  introducing  other  new  gods,  and  of 
corrupting  the  youth.  Posterity  has  been  unanimous  in 
condemning  the  successful  prosecutor  and  the  court  that 
voted  for  the  death  of  Socrates,  so  that  it  is  of  more  importance 
to  try  to  see  their  grounds  of  action.  Of  the  various  books 
written  by  Socrates'  pupils  upon  the  case,  Xenophon's 
Memorabilia  perhaps  helps  us  best  to  understand  the  action 
of  Anytos  and  his  people,  for  it  grapples  most  closely  and 
sympathetically  with  the  actual  prejudices  that  influenced  the 
verdict.  The  Athenians  were  a  pious  people  in  their  way — 
which  was  not  our  modern  way,  nor  the  way  of  Socrates  ;  and 

1  The  rpt«a/3oXov  for  attendance  at  the  Ecclesia  ;  Aristophanes,  Eccles. 
102,  186,  307  ;   Plutus,  329.     See  Demosthenes,  Timocr.  134. 

2  Hellenica,  iv.  8,31.  Grote  echoes  his  praise,  and  Meyer  and  Beloch 
both  remark,  with  sympathy,  upon  the  sentence  of  Xenophon. 

^  Anytos  and  the  corn  trade  (Lysias,  22)- 


THE  NEW  AGE  277 

Xenophon  in  the  first  book  of  his  memoirs  devotes  himself 
to  showing  how  pious  and  god-fearing  Socrates  really  was  in 
all  the  conduct  of  his  life,  not  merely  in  a  higher  or  esoteric 
sense,  but  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  words.  He  emphasizes 
how  Socrates  sacrificed  to  the  gods  of  Athens,  how  he  believed 
in  divination,  how  he  taught  his  pupils  to  worship  and  trust  the 
gods  and  to  sacrifice  to  them — KahhvvafXLv  S'  epSetv.^ 

This  was  very  well ;    but  contemporaries  who  did  not 
understand  Socrates — and  who  did  ? — might  be  forgiven  for 
thinking  that  the  conduct  and  careers  of  the  most  conspicuous 
of  Socrates'  pupils  were  very  strong  evidence  that  Socrates 
was  anything  but  a  moral  teacher.     Aristophanes  long  ago 
had  shown  up  Socrates  in  his  Clouds,  and  the  play  was  remem- 
bered ;  2  and  time  had  shown  that  the  comic  poet  was  not  very 
far  wrong  when  he  drew  the  son  of  Strepsiades.     Alcibiades  and 
Critias  were  two  of  the  cleverest  young  men  in  Athens  and  of 
the  best  families  ;    they  consorted  with  Socrates  ;   and  what 
did  they  learn  of  him  ?  ^    They  had  wrecked  the  Empire, 
ruined  Attica,  upset  the  Democracy,  established  a  tyranny, 
and  been  the  death  of  hundreds  and  thousands  of  Athenians. 
Xenophon  replies  that,  so  long  as  they  went  with  Socrates, 
they  conducted  themselves  aright.    But  they  were  men  of  great 
ambition  ;    they  frequented  Socrates'  company  not  to  learn 
his  self-government  and  self-restraint,  but  to  acquire  the  arts 
of  speech  and  of  public  life,  and  they  left  him — "  leapt  away 
from  him  " — as  soon  as  they  thought  they  were  equal  to 
political  careers.     Exactly  ;  and  when  in  later  years  Plato's 
dialogues  appeared,  there  were  disastrous  admissions  about 
this  training.     Socrates  there  figures  as  a  master  of  dialectic, 
sly,  ingenious,  ironical,  full  of  twists  and  turns  and  cleverness, 
an  adept  at  tripping  up  common-sense  people  and  making 
ordinary  experience,  the  practical,  perhaps  unreflective,  wisdom 
of  daily  life,  look  absurd.     "  They  find  themselves  shut  up 
at  last ;  for  they  have  nothing  to  say  in  this  new  game,  of 
which  words  are  the  counters  ;   and  yet  all  the  time  they  are 
in  the  right."  *    The  young  men  learnt  the  tricks  of  Socrates, 

^  Mem.  i.  3,  3.     See  Chapter  VI.  p.  183. 

^  See  Plato,  Apol.  i8b,  C-19C. 

^  Aeschines,  Timarch.  ly^. 

*  Adeimantos  in  Plato,  Rep.  vi.  487B. 


278  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  used  them  freely  ;  ^  and  it  led  to  family  divisions,  and  to 
ill-feeling  wherever  they  went.     The  Athenians  knew  as  well 
as  we  do  that  of  all  types   the   most  unsufferable  are  clever 
youths  and  advanced  women  ;— even  Euripides  disliked  them. 
But  to  go  deeper  than  mere  tricks  of  speech  and  bad  manners, 
there  was  a  strong  feeling  that  Socrates  unsettled  men.     I  do 
not  know  vv^hether  Anytos  ever   read  Plato's  Apology  ;    if  he 
did,  he  might  well  have  urged  that   there  could  be  no  more 
damaging  admission  than  the  famous   sentence,  "  the  unex- 
amined life  is  un-Kve-able  for  a  human  being  "  ;  ^  it  was  the  very 
charter  of  the  individualist  and  the  anarchist ;  it  meant  the 
unsettlement  of  everything,  and  implied  the  reference  of  every- 
thing in  state  and  life  and  religion,  of  the  whole  body  of  human 
relations,    to   the   individual   judgment.^     Alcibiades'    whole 
career  was  a  commentary  on  that  principle.     There  never  was 
any  Athenian  who  had  exercised  an   influence  so  subtly  de- 
structive of  Democracy  as  Socrates.     Even  Plato  represents 
the  personified  laws  of  Athens,  reminding  Socrates  how  he 
had  always  praised  Sparta  and  Crete  as  well-governed.^    His 
emphasis  on  the  opinion  of   the   expert  was  obviously  anti- 
democratic.    As  for  Socrates'  piety,  there  was  that  poem  of 
Critias  on  the  origin  of  the  gods,  which  he  traced  to  the  happy 
thought  of  a  cunning  fellow  who  invented  an  invisible  police 
to  quench  secret  lawlessness  ^ — a  fine  outcome   of  religious 
guidance  by  Socrates. 

Still  the  hemlock-cup  was  a  blunder  ;  it  did  nothing  to 
check  the  tendencies  of  the  modern  culture,  nothing  to  con- 
solidate the  state,  nothing  to  counteract  the  spread  of  in- 
dividualism.     It     alienated     thoughtful     people    from    the 

1  See  the  dialogue  of  Alcibiades  and  Pericles  (Xen.  Mem.  i.  20,  40-46) 
referred  to  in  Chapter  IV.  p.  116. 

2  Plato,  A-pol.  3 8a.  I  find  it  very  hard  to  get  any  clear  idea  of 
the  dates  of  Plato's  works. 

3  This  is  always  the  conservative  argument ;  it  meets  us  again  in 
Plutarch  in  another  connexion.  Invariably  futile  as  it  is,  it  has  a 
certain  obvious  sense  about  it,  but  what  those  who  use  it  fail  to  see  is 
the  fundamental  unbelief  that  prompts  its  use. 

*  Crito,  52E. 

6  A  p.  Sextus  Empiricus,  adv.  Math.  ix.  54.  One  feature  of  the  rule 
of  the  Thirty  noted  by  Isocrates  {Areop.  66)  is  their  contemptuous 
treatment  of  the  temples,  built  with  such  splendour  by  the  Democracy 
{Kocrfxr^aacrav  r-qv  ■jtoXiv). 


THE  NEW  AGE  279 

Democracy.  They  did  not  renounce  it  ;  they  only  left  it 
alone  the  more,  so  far  as  they  could,  and  turned  to  what 
had  more  interest  for  them.  What  this  attitude  means  in  a 
modern  community,  whether  state  or  municipality,  we  are 
beginning  to  realize.  Where  state  and  municipality  are  one 
and  the  same,  and  when  "  some  lofty  soul  born  in  a  mean 
city,  the  politics  of  which  he  contemns  and  neglects,"  some 
pure-minded  man,  who  "  will  not  join  in  the  wickedness  of 
his  fellows,  but  neither  is  he  able  singly  to  restrain  all  their 
fierce  natures,"  comes  to  the  practical  conclusion  that,  as  he 
cannot  be  of  use  to  the  state,  he  will  hold  his  peace,  and  go 
his  own  way,  or,  like  a  traveller  in  a  dust-storm,  will  shelter 
under  a  wall,  content  to  live  his  own  life  and  to  be  innocent  ^ — 
state  and  man  suffer  perhaps  even  more  than  they  do  with  us. 

The  city-state  in  the  fourth  century  has  lost  the  "  integrity  " 
or  "  unity  "  which  it  had  in  the  age  of  Pericles.  The  stress  is 
shifting  more  and  more  to  the  individual — a  movement  that 
had  begun  indeed  long  before,  but  was  now  more  evident. 
The  whole  sophistic  Aufklarung,  the  teaching  of  Socrates, 
the  attitude  of  Euripides  to  life,  tended  to  make  "  man 
the  measure  of  all,"  ^  to  emphasize  the  individual ;  and  the 
individual  always  likes  to  be  emphasized.  The  Peloponnesian 
War  itself  contributed  in  the  same  direction.  The  art  of 
war  was  not  the  same  thing  at  the  end  of  it  as  at  the  beginning. ^ 
The  career  of  Demosthenes  the  general  changed  many  things 
and  suggested  many — a  new  value,  for  instance,  for  light- 
armed  troops  ;  and  the  hapless  end  of  Cleon  was  a  forcible 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  to  lead  an  assembly  and  to  lead 
an  army  demand  different  gifts.  The  length  of  the  war  and 
of  the  several  campaigns  in  it  made  it  clear  that  finance  was 
too  serious  a  matter  to  be  entrusted  to  an  official  elected  by 
lot,  as  under  the  constitution  of  Cleisthenes.  Thus,  as 
national  life  grew  complex,  functions  were  specialized,  and 
in  the  fourth  century  we  find  financiers,  demagogues,  and 
generals  in  different   classes.     A  demagogue   and   a  general 

^  Plato,  Rep.  vi.  496. 

2  Adam,  Gifford  Lectures,  p.  274,  emphasizes  that  Protagoras  meant 
not  "  universal  man,"  but  man  as  the  individual  and  not  the  genus.  He 
cites  Theaefetus,  152 a,  and  refers  to  Nestle's  criticism  of  the  other  view 
in  his  Euripides,  p.  406,  n.  12. 

2  See  Chapter  VII.  p.  218. 


28o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

might  work  together,  and  a  financier  with  them  ;  but,  just 
as  it  appears  that  in  modern  athletics  Greeks  never  do  so 
well  in  a  team  as  Turks  and  such  races,^  because  every  Greek 
must  play  for  himself,  so  in  the  fourth  century  political 
alliances  were  unstable  combinations.  The  group  would  be 
dissolved,  and  the  men  in  it  would  be  hand  and  glove  with 
their  bitterest  enemies  of  yesterday  against  their  former 
colleagues.  Timotheos  swears  publicly  that  he  will  prosecute 
Iphicrates  for  being  an  alien  —  and  then  they  seal  a 
partnership  with  a  betrothal  of  their  children.  And  what 
became  of  the  state  meanwhile  ?  "V/hen  it  began  to  be 
tiresome,  the  great  general  coolly  went  away  and  lived  in 
Lesbos.  So  much  for  the  outcome  in  actual  life  of  the  insist- 
ence of  Socrates  upon  the  expert.  The  expert  becomes 
inevitable  ;  and  then,  as  we  find  to-day,  some  one  else  will 
pay  more  for  him,  and  he  goes. 

In  every  field  of  life  the  expert  and  the  individual  had 
a  new  predominance.  In  the  old  days  of  the  Persian  War 
they  put  up  no  bronze  statues  in  honour  of  Themistocles  or 
Miltiades,nor  did  they  call  the  sea-fight  at  Salamis  Themistocles' 
battle  but  the  Athenians',  and  the  fight  at  Marathon  was 
the  state's,  not  Miltiades' ;  but  nowadays  most  people,  con- 
tinues Demosthenes, 2  say  that  Timotheos  took  Corcyra,  and 
Iphicrates  cut  up  the  Spartan  mora,  and  Chabrias  won  the 
sea-fight  off  Naxos.  Statues  of  individuals  were  multiplied 
past  counting.  "  If,"  writes  Dr.  Ernest  Gardner,^  "  there  is 
one  characteristic  which,  more  than  any  other,  marks  the 
distinction  of  Greek  art  of  the  fourth  century  from  that  of 
the  fifth,  it  is  the  greater  prominence  of  the  individual  and 
personal  element,  alike  in  employer,  in  artist,  and  in  subject." 
He  points  out  how,  apart  from  statues  of  victorious  athletes, 
almost  all  the  chief  works  of  art  of  the  fifth  century  were 
public  dedications,  made  at  the  expense  of  the  state,  and 
recording  the  triumphs  of  the  people,  or  giving  expression  to 
its  religious  aspirations.  In  the  fourth  century  the  private 
dedication  is  more  prominent.  The  individuality  of  the 
various  masters  seems  to  assert  itself  more  strongly.     Portraits 

^  Pears,  Turkey  and  her  People. 

'^Demosthenes,  23,  Aristocr.  196-198. 

*  A  Handbook  of  Greek  Sculpture,  pp.  350,  351,  450,  t,6i. 


THE  NEW  AGE  281 

are  made  with  realistic  exactness — Lucian  tells  how  Demetrius 
of  Alopece  made  one  of  the  Corinthian  generals,  Pellichos, 
"high-bellied,  bald,  his  clothes  half  off  him,  some  of  the 
hairs  in  his  beard  caught  by  the  wind,  his  veins  prominent," 
and  Dr.  Gardner  contrasts  it  with  the  bust  of  Pericles  by 
CresUas.  "  The  Aphrodite  of  Praxiteles  had  as  great  an 
influence  on  later  art,  and  represents  as  essential  a  part  of 
Greek  religion  as  the  Zeus  or  Athena  of  Phidias.  But  alike 
the  choice  of  the  subject  and  the  manner  in  which  it  is  treated 
belong  not  only  to  a  different  artist  but  also  to  a  different  age." 
It  was  said  in  antiquity  that  the  model  for  the  Cnidian  Aphrodite 
was  Phryne,  and  whether  this  is  true  or  not,  Praxiteles  left 
two  other  statues  of  her.  She  too  represents  an  aspect  of  the 
individualism  of  the  new  age  ;  she  and  her  profession  have  a;. 
individuals  a  far  larger  place  in  literature  and  biography. 

Biography  is  one  of  the  features  of  the  new  century.  Ion 
of  Chios,  with  the  sketches  in  his  Epidemiai,  is  a  forerunner, 
but  the  greatest  and  most  obvious  contrast  lies  between 
Thucydides  and  Xenophon.  Xenophon  indeed  in  the 
Hellenica  tries  to  follow  the  Thucydidean  model,  but  there 
are  always  happier  moments  when  he  lets  himself  go  in  accord 
with  his  own  instinct  and  writes  of  his  hero  or  the  scene  he 
has  witnessed  with  his  own  eyes. — of  Agesilaos  on  the  frontiers 
of  Boeotia,  or  in  parley  with  Pharnabazos,  or  arranging 
a  marriage  for  an  ally.^  Alcibiades  comes  again  into 
history,  but  rather  as  a  controversy  in  biography.  Plato's 
characters  in  his  dialogues  speak  aloud  of  the  age.  There  is 
Anytos  sensible,  pragmatic,  impossible,  with  his  idea  that 
any  Athenian  kalos  kdgathos — "gentleman,"  let  us  say,  and 
be  democrats  with  him — would  be  a  better  instructor  of 
youth  than  any  sophist ;  and  if  we  ask,  how  or  where  this 
gifted  Any  Man  learnt  what  he  has  to  teach  ?  why,  where 
but  from  the  "  gentlemen  "  of  his  father's  generation  ?  Of 
course  Anytos  is  right — 

ducimus  autem 
hos  quoque  felices  qui  ferre  incommoda  vitae 
nee  jactare  jugum  vita  didicere  magistra. 

^  This  contrast  between  Xenophon  trying  to  write  in  the  style  of 
Thucydides  and  writing  in  his  own  is  brought  out  by  Ivo  Bruns, 
Lit.  Portrdt,  p.  38. 


282  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Life  is  the  best  of  teachers,  even  when  we  only  take  her  as 
a  companion  or  a  taskmistress  ;  but  when  once  her  authority 
is  challenged,  what  has  she  to  say — or  Anytos  ?  But  Plato 
has  achieved  here  a  portrait — doubly  or  trebly  significant  ; 
it  is  not  a  parody — Anytos  would  admit  that ;  but  it  is  a  fatal 
criticism  all  the  same  ;  and  that  such  portraits  are  made  is 
a  sign  of  the  times,  a  new  thing.  Callicles  in  the  Gorgias  is 
an  even  greater  triumph — he  is  so  tremendously  right  and 
sensible — and  hopeless,  and  never  sees  it.  There  is  nothing 
in  Aristophanes  to  equal  either  of  them.  The  later  years  of 
the  century  see  Characters  written  with  great  wit  and  penetra- 
tion by  Theophrastus,  but  far  from  rivalling  the  intensely 
individual  portraits  of  Plato. 

Portraiture  and  biography  are  mfinifestations  of  that 
triumph  of  the  sense  of  fact  v/hich  we  noted  as  the  mark  of  the 
age.  Philosophy  is  another  and  a  greater,  and  like  biography 
it  implies  prose.  The  old  philosophers  had  used  verse,  but  for 
analysis  prose  is  the  true  medium.  Verse  had  done  its  utmost 
for  analysis  and  criticism  in  the  hands  of  Euripides,  and  now 
prose  began  to  take  its  place.  Poetry  was  of  course  written — 
it  always  is  ;  but  the  ode  on  The  Persians  composed  by 
Timotheos  in  the  first  decade  of  the  new  century  is  tiresome 
and  empty  ;  as  an  exercise  in  metre,  we  are  told  it  is  perfect, 
and,  no  doubt,  it  went  well  to  its  music  ;  it  was  good  enough 
if  you  did  not  care  about  the  words  sung.  Prose  prevailed^ 
and  the  century  gave  Greece  some  of  its  greatest  masters  in 
prose.  No  one  b}^  now,  if  he  v/ished  his  book  to  be  read, 
would  take  Herodotus  as  a  model,  nor,  as  a  rule,  Thucydides. 
But  from  the  very  close  of  the  war  we  have  three  of  the  greatest 
of  Greek  prose  writers  rising  steadily  to  the  height  of  their 
powers.  Enough  for  the  present  has  been  said  of  Lysias,  the 
first  to  emerge.  For  narrative  Greek  literature  has  few  to 
match  Xenophon,  and  no  one  in  dialogue  to  approach  Plato. 
Isocrates  had  an  enormous  influence  on  Greek  style  right  down 
into  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire — not  greatly  for  the  gain 
of  readers  in  after  days.  Demosthenes  was  yet  to  come. 
Names  such  as  these  go  far  to  show  that  there  was  still  abun- 
dance of  life  in  the  Greek  stock,  if  it  needs  to  be  shown.  An  age 
that  teaches  mankind  to  think,  and  gives  it  a  speech  adequate 
to  render  its  thought,  is  a  great  age,  even  if  empire  is  gone  and 


THE  NEW  AGE  283 

greater  changes  are  coming.  The  fact  and  the  individual, 
criticism  and  independence — one  does  not  need  to  repeat  that 
here  also  they  mark  the  period. 

And  what  became  of  the  state  meanwhile,  as  we  asked 
a  few  pages  back  ?  Individualism,  though  the  ugly  abstract 
term  had  not  appeared,  was  the  prevailing  philosophy  of 
street  and  market,  unconscious  as  such  potent  philosophies 
generally  are.  When  Apollodorus  told  the  Athenian  court  of 
his  troubles  with  the  crew  of  his  trireme,  he  explained  that  the 
rowers,  whom  he  had  got  from  the  roll  provided  by  the  authori- 
ties, waited  with  him  on  the  ship  till  they  should  come  home 
in  due  course,  but  they  were  poor  workmen  ;  "  my  own  rowers 
had  confidence  in  themselves  and  in  their  pov^^ers  of  rowing, 
and  they  deserted  and  went  wherever  they  thought  they 
would  once  more  get  the  highest  pay,  reckoning  the  present 
advantage  to  outweigh  any  future  dangers,  if  ever  I  caught 
them  again."  ^  v Years  before  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War  this  very  habit  of  desertion  had  paralysed  Athenian  fleets 
again  and  again  ;  and  we  can  hardly  blame  the  sailors,  for 
there  is  a  limit  to  the  service  one  will  render  to  a  state  that 
provides  neither  pay  nor  rations.  When  a  state  either  will 
not  or  cannot  provide  these  for  its  men,  it  is  teaching  them 
to  think  for  themselves  and  of  themselves.  The  same  weakness 
tells  upon  every  naval  and  military  endeavour  of  Athens  and 
most  other  city-states  during  the  fourth  century .1 

Xenophon  gives  us  a  conversation  between  Socrates  and  the 
younger  Pericles  which  anticipates  or  recalls  features  of  a 
later  day  ;  Athenians  will  not  drill  (they  ridicule  the  idea  of  it)  ; 
they  will  not  obey  magistrates,  and  they  will  not  agree." 
Isocrates  complains  that  they  will  not  face  the  enemy  even  in 
front  of  their  own  walls  ;  ^  and  the  demand  of  Demosthenes 
that  Athenians  should  serve  in  person  is  famous.  No  doubt 
the  change  was  due  to  several  causes  ;  the  state  in  peace  had  to 
pay  for  ordinary  services  in  law  court  and  ecclesia,  and  it  was 
only  reasonable  to  expect  it  to  do  so  for  military  service  in  war  ; 
but  there  were  other  reasons.     A  commercial  and  industrial 

1  [Dem.]  50,  Polycles,  16.  This  may  explain  the  Athenian  practice 
in  an  earher  day,  mentioned  to  Tissaphernes  by  Alcibiades,  of  not 
paying  the  rowers  up  to  date  (Thuc.  viii.  45,  2). 

2  Xen.  Mem.  iii.  5,15.  *  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  "jj. 


284  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

people  cannot  suddenly  leave  all  its  business  for  an  indefinite 
time,  as  a  nomadic  or  (to  some  extent)  a  farming  community 
may.  So  the  states  had  recourse  to  mercenaries,  and  for  one 
cause  and  another  there  was  abundance  of  these  "wandering 
men,"  as  Isocrates  again  and  again  points  out,  his  explanation 
being  that  it  is  due  to  poverty.  It  may  be  also  that  Greece 
was  over-populated  again. ^  Slave-labour  at  all  events  was  a 
factor  in  driving  freemen  abroad.  But  it  was  not  only  poor 
men  who  went  wandering  off  as  soldiers  for  hire,  or  deserted 
their  ships  to  seek  better  wages  ;  we  find  the  habit  of  foreign 
travel  established.  Actors  went  from  city  to  city,  and  came 
to  be  trusted  as  international  agents.  Physicians  apparently 
were  also  a  wandering  race  from  Democedes  downwards. 
According  to  Aristophanes,  about  388  Athens  was  without  a 
physician.  2 

Chremylos.  Is  there  a  doctor  now  in  all  the  town  ? 
There  are  no  fees  and  therefore  there's  no  skill. 
Blepsidemos.  Let's  think  awhile. 
Chremylos.  There's  none. 

Blepsidemos.  No  more  there  is. 

Thus  sailor  and  soldier,  physician  and  philosopher,  were 
content  to  lack  a  country,  to  live  abroad  and  be  comfortable. 
If  Athens  had  abundance  of  foreign  merchants  domiciled 
in  the  Peiraieus,  we  may  well  suppose  that  foreign  ports  had 
Athenian  residents.  Plato  and  Xenophon  illustrate  how 
readily  men  of  culture  were  content  to  be  citizens  of  the 
world.  One  inference  may  be  drawn  at  once — that,  in  spite 
of  wars  and  jealousies  between  the  governments  of  states, 
ordinary  people  were  beginning  to  realize  that  one  part  of  the 
Greek  world  was  very  like  another ;  and  when  this  sort  of 
feeling  begins  to  be  general  at  any  period  of  history,  it  is  a 
sign  of  further  changes. 

If  it  meant  the  decline  of  the  city-state,  or  even  its  dis- 
appearance— why  not  ?     The  question  was  already  beginning 
to  be  asked.     In  the  Gorgias  Callicles  goes  back  to  the  old 
'"  sophistic  distinction  between  Nature  and  Convention,  as  any- 
one must  who  has  travelled  the  world  and  has  any  strong 

1  This  is  a  guess  merely.  Most  of  the  estimates  of  population  at  this 
period  which  I  have  seen  appear  to  me  to  be  rather  too  conjectural. 

2  Plutus,  407. 


THE  NEW  AGE  285 

sense  for  fact,  Polus  has  challenged  Socrates  on  the  case  of 
Archelaos  the  Macedonian  usurper,  and  sarcastically  dilated 
on  his  "("misery,"  ^ — and  has  suffered  the  natural  consequences 
of  an  argument  with  Socrates.  Callicles  sees  that  Polus 
tripped  over  Nature  and  Custom  ;  so  he  joins  in  and  maintains 
that,  if  we  stick  to  what  clearly  is  Nature,  and  will  be  done 
with  Convention,  we  shall  get  a  grip  of  realities.  Nature  shows 
that  it  is  right  that  the  stronger  should  have  the  advantage — 
shows  it  in  the  case  of  animals,  and  of  mankind  too ;  in  states 
and  races  the  stronger  rules,  and  ought  to  rule.  Of  course, 
society,  to  protect  itself,  weaves  spells  around  the  strong  from 
the  very  cradle — instilling  conventional  notions  about  "  fair  " 
and  "  just  "  ;  but  when  a  really  strong  man  rises  up  and 
flings  off  all  this  nonsense,  all  our  prescriptions,  and  enchant- 
ments, and  laws  contrary  to  Nature,  lo !  and  behold,  we  find 
we  have  a  Master,  and  there  is  real  natural  Justice  all  ablaze 
and  plain  to  see.^  Real  natural  beauty  and  justice  require 
that  a  man,  who  is  to  live  the  really  right  life,  should  allow 
his  desires  to  grow  to  the  utmost  and  not  repress  them,  but 
be  able  by  his  manhood  and  his  general  sense  to  gratify  them 
to  the  full  whatever  they  are.  Of  course,  in  his  turn  Callicles 
is  tripped  and  tangled  by  Socrates  ;  but,  all  the  same,  he  is 
not  convinced.  The  supposed  date  of  the  dialogue  is  a  little 
before  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  If  the  impulsive 
Callicles  overstates  things  in  his  generous  indignation,  the 
principle  which  he  lays  down  is  one  supremely  operative  in 
the  period  that  follows.  Not  everybody  tried  to  play  Arche- 
laos— far  from  it ;  but  men  sat  loose  to  the  traditions  of  race 
and  state,  and  if  the  state  suffered,  well  ?  What  didjNature 
say  ?  If  Nature  did  not  speak  in  Callicles'  emphatic  way, 
she  said  very  much  the  same  things,  and  plenty  of  people 
thought  with  her.  To  a  certain  extent  they  were  right ;  the 
city-state  was  not  everything ;  perhaps  we  all  of  us  over- 
estimate the  significance  of  any  and  every  state.  Euripides  in 
the  previous  generation  had  challenged  the  moral  right  of  the 
state  to  play  with  human  life.  The  new  challenge  threatened 
the  very  existence  of  the  state. 

One  feature  of  the  new  age  is  the  massing  of  wealth  in  a 
few  hands,  and  the  employment  of  it  for  pomp  and  enjoyment. 

1  Plato,  Gorg.  470,  471.  ^  Gorg.  483,  484. 


286  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

« 
Timotheos,  Chabrias,  and  Meidias  are  mentioned  as  building 
themselves  sumptuous  palaces — Timotheos  even  included  a 
tower  in  his  design. ^  "  Some  people,"  says  Demosthenes, 
indicating  the  political  leaders  of  the  day,  "  have  provided 
themselves  with  private  houses  more  imposing  than  our 
public  buildings  ;  and  the  lower  the  fortunes  of  the  city  have 
fallen,  the  higher  theirs  have  risen."  ^  Xenophon  describes 
the  views  of  Socrates  on  house-building,  perhaps  with  more 
than  a  glance  at  his  later  contemporaries;  "pictures,"  he 
says,  "  and  decorations  take  away  more  enjoyment  than  they 
add."  ^  In  the  grand  old  days  of  Athenian  greatness,  so 
Isocrates  tells  us  in  380  B.C.,  men  did  not  despise  the  common 
good  ;  "  they  neither  enjoyed  it  as  if  it  were  their  own,  nor 
neglected  it  as  if  it  were  other  people's  "  ;  they  did  not  judge 
happiness  by  a  money  standard  ;  their  only  rivalry  was  to 
be  the  first  to  do  the  state  a  service.*  Five-and-twenty  years 
later,  in  355,  he  returns  to  the  contrast  of  past  and  present  with 
a  still  gloomier  feeling.  In  the  old  days  they  did  not  count 
expensiveness  piety,  nor  keep  extraneous  festivals,  which 
involved  banquets,  on  a  sumptuous  scale,  while  they  sublet 
to  contractors  the  holiest  sacrifices.  Sacred  embassies  were 
not  managed  in  a  spirit  of  wanton  extravagance,  but  sensibly ; 
and  happiness  was  not  measured  by  processions  or  by  rivalries 
in  equipping  choruses  for  tragedy.  You  would  not  have  seen 
the  many  in  those  days  dependent  on  the  chance  of  a  ballot 
at  the  law-court  door  for  their  daily  bread,  "  nor  dancing  on 
the  stage  in  gold  and  going  through  the  winter  in  what  I  will 
not  describe."  ^  In  those  days  the  poor  did  not  envy  the 
rich,  nor  the  rich  despise  the  poor  ;  no,  wealth  succoured 
need.^  Country  houses  were  better  then  than  those  in  the 
town  ;  many  people  never  came  into  town  even  for  a  festival 
— they  preferred  to  celebrate  it  at  home.'  Well-to-do  young 
men  were  compelled  to  spend  their  time  in  riding,  in  the 
gymnasium,  in  hunting,  and  in  philosophy ;  they  did  not  pass 

^  Timotheos'  house  (Aristophanes,  Plutus,  180 ;  Athenaeus,  xii.  548 a), 
Chabrias'  (Hypereides,  Frag.  137),  Meidias'  (Demosthenes,  Meidias,  158). 
2  Demosthenes,  Olynth.  iii.  29.  ^  Xen.  Mem.  iii.  8,  10. 

*  Isocrates,  5,  Paneg.  76-79. 
5  Isocrates,  7,  Areop.  29,  30,  53,  54. 
'  Isocrates,  Areop.  31,  32.  '  Areop.  52. 


THE  NEW  AGE  287 

their  days,  as  they  do  now,  in  gambHng-houses  and  among 
flute-girls  ;  they  avoided  the  agora  ;  there  were  traditions  of 
good  conduct  and  modesty  ;  and  as  for  eating  or  drinking 
in  an  inn  [iv  KairrfKeio)) — why,  not  even  a  decent  slave 
would  have  done  it.^  The  very  soul  of  a  city  is  its  constitu- 
tion ;  2  all  depends  on  that,  and  in  Athens  the  constitution 
is  ruined.  Multitudes  of  laws  there  are — endless  minutiae — a 
sure  sign  of  bad  government,  Isocrates  maintains  ;  good  govern- 
ment depends  not  on  porches  full  01  laws  inscribed,  but  on 
righteousness  in  the  individual  souls  of  men.^  His  only 
hope  would  seem  to  lie  in  the  restoration  of  some  effective 
powers  to  the  Areopagus. 

These  preterites  of  Isocrates  point  to  the  present  rather 
than  to  the  past.  The  state  in  the  early  years  of  the  century 
was  in  desperate  need  of  money,  and  so  were  the  citizens ; 
and,  if  we  may  believe  Isocrates,  the  poverty  of  the  lov/er 
classes  remained  a  permanent  factor  in  the  Athenian  situation 
— in  all  Greece,  in  short.  Slave-labour  was  one  of  the  main 
causes,  but  little,  if  anything,  was  done  to  meet  this  ;  even 
the  great  philosophers  recognize  slavery  as  a  natural  institu- 
tion— some  men  and  nations  are  "  slaves  by  nature."  The 
slave  competed  against  the  free  labourer,  and  the  slave-owner 
grew  rich,  while  the  free  labourer  continued  poor,  and  clamoured 
for  state  pay,  and  voted  (when  he  got  the  chance)  for  the 
condemnation  of  the  rich  man  on  trial  and  the  confiscation 
of  his  property.  "  You  must  reflect,"  says  a  speaker,  whose 
speech  Lysias  is  supposed  to  have  written,*  "  that  you  have 
often  heard  these  men  tell  you  that  if  you  do  not  condemn 
whom  they  bid  you  condemn,  there  will  be  no  state  pay  for 
you."  The  people  live  on  such  state  pay,  says  Isocrates,  and 
are  grateful  for  prosecutions  and  impeachments. ^ 

The  maintenance  of  fleets,  the  levying  of  war,  the  festivals 
of  Dionysos — everything  was  laid  on  the  rich.  What  Plato 
emphasizes  as  one  of  the  prime  defects  of  Oligarchy  seems  to 
be  shared  by  fourth-century  Democracy — "  the  inevitable 
division  ;    such  a  state  is  not  one  but  two  states,  the  one  of 

^  Areop.  45-49. 

^  Areop.  14,  e(TTi  yap  '^V)(fi  noXecdS  ovSev  erepov  r]  jroXireia. 

3  Areop.  39-41.  *  Lysias,  27,  I  ;  cf.  Meyer,  Gr.  Gesch.  v.  §  871. 

^  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  130. 


288  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

poor,  the  other  of  rich  men  ;  and  they  are  Hving  on  the  same 
spot,  and  always  conspiring  against  one  another."^  "What 
they  consider,"  says  Isocrates,  "  is  not  how  to  provide  a 
livelihood  for  those  in  need,  but  how  they  may  level  down 
those  who  seem  to  have  something  to  those  who  have  nothing. "  ^ 
Every  man  for  himself — artist,  general,  sycophant,  or 
juryman — we  seem  a  long  way  from  the  glorious  Athenian 
Democracy  described  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  by  Pericles,  a 
thing  of  soul  and  spirit,  instinct  with  the  most  generous  ideals, 
existing  for  one  consecrating  purpose — the  general  uplift  of 
all  human  life.  In  this  fourth  century  there  seems  a  universal 
want  of  ideals  in  the  state.  "  You  must  reflect,"  says  Lysias 
in  402,^  as  if  stating  an  axiom  which  everybody  wiU  admit, 
"  that  no  man  is  by  nature  an  oligarch  or  a  democrat ;  not 
at  all,  but  whatever  form  of  constitution  suits  his  individual 
interests,  that  is  the  form  he  wishes  to  see  established  "  ;  and 
he  illustrates  his  axiom  from  the  careers  of  Phrynichos  and 
Pisander — "  many  of  the  Four  Hundred  returned  with  the 
Peiraieus  party,  and  some  of  those  who  turned  out  the  Four 
Hundred  were  themselves  among  the  Thirty."  Fifty  years 
later  Isocrates  says  much  the  same  * — "  let  us  leave  off  think- 
ing that  sycophants  are  democrats  " — and  better  democrats 
if  they  are  drunken  ^ — "  that  gentlemen  are  oligarchs,  and 
let  us  recognize  that  by  nature  nobody  is  either  the  one  or 
the  other,  but  in  whatever  constitution  men  are  honoured, 
that  they  wish  to  see  established."  The  verbal  similarity 
is  striking,  the  more  so,  when  we  remember  that  it  is  not  a 
quotation.  The  state  is  a  club,  in  fact,  or  a  benefit  society, 
and  the  best  state  is  that  which  costs  least  and  yields  the 
largest  dividends  in  comfort  or  in  cash.  In  the  old  days  the 
state  ran  the  Empire  as  a  trade,  some  critics  tell  us  ;  it  was  a 
business,  an  industry,  that  supported  so  many  hands  afloat  in 
triremes,  and  so  many  ashore  in  law  courts.  Athens  has  lost 
that  industry,  but  the  idea  survives  ;  the  state  exists  to  main- 
tain the  citizens.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  a  club  or  any  such 
society  to  provide  the  maximum  of  comfort  for  every  member 
and  to  secure  that  all  are  equally  comfortable.     In  Athens, 

1  Plato,  Republic,  viii.  55 id.  ^  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  131. 

3  Lysias,  25,  8.  *  Isocrates,  8,  de  Pace,  133. 

5  De  Pace,  13. 


THE  NEW  AGE  289 

it  was  plain  to  everybody,  there  was  abundance  of  comfort 
and  luxury  for  a  few,  and  none  at  all  for  most ;  it  was  a 
Democracy  without  equality. 

In  such  a  world  Aristophanes  produced  his  Ecclesiazusae, 
or  Women  in  Parliament — a  play  which  lacks  some  of  the 
features  of  his  earlier  comedies,  but  hardly  their  wit  and 
invention.     He  describes  a  meeting  of  the  Assembly,  and  how 

Evaeon,  smart  accomplished  chap, 
With  nothing  on,  as  most  of  us  supposed. 
But  he  himself  insisted  he  was  clothed — 
He  made  a  popular  democratic  speech. 
Behold,  says  he,  I  am  myself  in  want 
Of  cash  to  save  me  ;  yet  I  know  the  way 
To  save  the  citizens,  and  save  the  state.  . 
Let  every  clothier  give  to  all  that  ask 
Warm  woollen  robes,  when  first  the  sun  turns  back.^ 
No  more  will  pleurisy  attend  us  then. 
Let  such  as  own  no  bedclothes  and  no  bed. 
After  they've  dined,  seek  out  the  furriers,  there 
To  sleep  ;  and  whoso  shuts  his  doors  against  them 
In  wintry  weather,  shall  be  fined  three  blankets. 

Blepyros.  Well  said  indeed  ;  and  never  man  would  dare 
To  vote  against  him,  had  he  added  this  : 
That  all  who  deal  in  grain  shall  freely  give 
Three  quarts  to  every  pauper,  or  be  hanged.  ^ 

But  the  great  achievement  at  the  Assembly,  in  which  this 
democratic  speech  was  delivered,  was  the  transfer  of  every 
power  in  the  state  to  the  women.  We  need  not  dwell  on  the 
trick  by  which  it  was  done,  but  consider  at  once  the  main 
features  of  the  new  feminine  government,  remembering  at 
the  same  time  that  parody  is  nothing  unless  it  parodies. 
Praxagora  shall  set  forth  her  schemes  herself  (with  the  aid  of 
Mr.  B.  B.  Rogers  ^)— 

The  rule  which  I  dare  to  enact  and  declare, 
Is  that  all  shall  be  equal,  and  equally  share 
All  wealth  and  enjoyments,  nor  longer  endure 
That  one  should  be  rich,  and  another  be  poor. 
That  one  should  have  acres,  far-stretching  and  wide. 
And  another  not  even  enough  to  provide 

^  The  winter  solstice,  21  December. 
2  Aristophanes,  Eccles.  408-425. 
*  Aristophanes,  Bccles.  590  ff. 


290  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Himself  with  a  grave  :  that  this  at  his  call 

Should  have  hundreds  of  servants/  and  that  none  at  all. 

All  this  I  intend  to  correct  and  amend  : 

Now  all  of  all  blessings  shall  freely  partake. 

One  life  and  one  system  for  all  men  I  make. 

Blepyros.  But  how  will  you  manage  it  ? 

Praxagora.  First,  I'll  provide 

That  the  silver,  and  land,  and  whatever  beside 
Each  man  shall  possess,  shall  be  common  and  free, 
One  fund  for  the  public  ;  then  out  of  it  we 
Will  feed  and  maintain  you,  like  housekeepers  true, 
Dispensing,  and  sparing,  and  caring  for  you. 

Blepyros  sees  how  land  can  be  put  into  a  common  stock,  but  a 
man,  he  thinks,  might  conceal  his  money,  silver  currency  and 
gold  Persian  darics.  Well,  he  won't  be  allowed  to.  But  if 
he  does  all  the  same  ?     It  won't  matter  ; 

Now  each  will  have  all  that  a  man  can  desire. 
Cakes,  barley-loaves,  chestnuts,  abundant  attire. 
Wine,  garlands  and  fish  :  then  why  should  he  wish 
The  wealth  he  has  gotten  by  fraud  to  retain  ? 

But  how  will  all  this  bear  on  marriage,  for  instance  ? 

All  women  and  men  will  be  common  and  free. 
No  marriage  or  other  restraint  there  will  be. 

Blepyros  sees  difficulties,  but  Praxagora  sweeps  them  aside 
with  a  magnificent  inconsequence. 

No  girl  will  of  course  be  permitted  to  mate 
Except  in  accord  with  the  rules  of  the  State.  .  .  . 

A  nice  democratic  device,  she  says  ;  and,  as  a  result,  if  no 
one  knows  who  his  father  is. 

All  youths  will  in  common  be  sons  of  the  old. 

Here  we  are  reminded  of  Plato's  Republic  ;  and  the  question 
rises  as  to  which  comes  first  in  order  of  time,  Praxagora's  or 
Plato's.  Some  scholars  hold  that  Aristophanes  is  parodying 
ideas  of  Plato,  which  he  knew  before  the  publication  of  the 
Republic.  If  the  precedence  is  the  other  way,  it  makes  Plato's 
idea  the  stranger.  Could  he  seriously  have  meant  it,  with  the 
1  Slaves,  in  the  original. 


THE  NEW  AGE  291 

comedy  before  him  ?  Further  advantages  Praxagora  has  to 
unfold  :  there  will  be  no  lawsuits,  when  there  is  no  private 
property.  (That,  thinks  Blepyros,  will  hit  a  lot  of  people.) 
There  will  be  no  gambling  ;  and  the  law  courts  will  be  turned 
into  dining-halls  ;  and  free  women  shall  be  rid  of  the  competi- 
tion of  slave  hetairai.  And  so  the  Chorus  appeals  to  the  judges 
for  the  prize  for  comedy — to  the  wise  for  the  wisdom  of  the 
play,  to  those  who  love  laughter  for  its  fun,  and  to  all  for  the 
oath's  sake,  seeing  they  have  sworn  to  judge  aright. 

The  motive  of  the  Plufus,  the  last  play  of  Aristophanes,  is 
again  economic.  The  hero  has  always  been  virtuous  and 
luckless,  while  temple- thieves,  demagogues,  sycophants,  and 
rascals  generally  are  rich  ;  so  he  goes  to  consult  the  god  at 
Delphi  as  to  whether  his  son  would  do  better  to  turn  knave. 
The  oracle  bids  him  take  home  the  first  man  he  meets,  and  it 
proves  to  be  the  blind  god,  Plutus.  The  proposal  is  made  to 
get  his  eyes  cured,  so  that  he  can  see  what  he  is  doing  and  give 
prosperity  to  the  deserving.  Poverty  appears  in  person  on 
the  scene,  and  carries  on  a  long  argument  to  show  that  all 
industry  depends  upon  Wealth  not  being  equally  distributed, 
and  that  industry  is  the  mainstay  of  comfort.  She  convinces 
nobody  ;  and  the  god  is  taken  away  to  "  incubate  "  in  the 
temple  of  Asclepios,  and  he  recovers  his  sight.  The  results 
that  follow  fill  the  rest  of  the  play,  which  (like  so  many)  ends 
with  a  series  of  episodes  illustrative  of  the  new  situation. 
The  last  is  the  arrival  of  the  priest  of  Zeus  the  Saviour  ;  he 
is  starving,  for  no  one  needs  to  pray  for  wealth  now.  For  our 
purposes  the  play  is  of  less  significance  than  its  predecessor, 
with  its  new  socialist  commonwealth,  its  feminine  govern- 
ment, and  its  abolition  of  marriage — parodies  all  of  them  of 
the  naturalistic  notions  of  the  day.  , 

But  the  crowning  comedy  came  not  from  the  theatre  but 
from  the  philosophic  schools,  and  not  quite  at  once. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  there  was  in 
Athens  a  man  called  Antisthenes.^  He  was  said  to  be  a  bastard, 
born  of  a  Thracian  woman,  and  at  that  time  most  Thracian 
women  in  Athens  were  slaves.     However,  as  he  said,  the 

^  In  dealing  with  Antisthenes,  I  have  drawn,  of  course,  from  Diogenes 
Laertius,  vi.,  and  found  much  help  in  E.  Caird's  Evolution  of  Theology 
in  the  Greek  Philosophies,  vol.  ii,,  and  Gomperz,  Greek  Thinkers,  vol.  ii. 


292  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Mother  of  the  Gods  was  a  foreigner  too,  and  Phrygian  at  that ; 
while,  as  for  being  earthborn  Uke  the  Athenians,  the  snails  and 
the  locusts  shared  that  high  origin.  He  became  a  pupil  of 
Gorgias  of  Leontini,  and  to  some  purpose  ;  for  grammarians 
of  later  days  reckoned  him  one  of  the  masters  of  Attic  prose. i 
Later  on  in  life — for  Plato  calls  him  a  "  late  learner,"  ^  and 
he  had  already  pupils  in  rhetoric — he  fell  in  with  Socrates  and 
came  under  his  influence.  The  simplicity,  the  plain  life, 
the  independence  and  self-mastery  of  Socrates  made  the 
deepest  impression  on  him,  and  he  walked  up  to  the  city 
from  the  Peiraieus  every  day  to  hear  him.  The  words  of  the 
teacher  and  his  character  were  to  him  a  call  to  emancipation 
from  the  false  standards  of  the  day — to  return  to  Nature. 
He  would  examine  life  ;  and  he  did,  and  his  report  upon  it 
tended  to  immense  simplification.^  He  too  became  master 
of  a  school.  "  What  shall  I  need  ?  "  asked  a  Pontic  youth 
who  wished  to  study  with  him.  "  A  little  book — and  sense  ; 
a  pencil — and  sense  ;  a  little  tablet — and  sense,"  he  said. 
Xenophon  draws  him  in  his  Symposium,  and  he  is  one  of  the 
striking  figures  there — with  his  sturdy  sense,  his  shrewd  and 
incisive  criticism,  and  his  speech  blunt  to  rudeness.  When  the 
question  goes  round,  "  On  what  do  you  plume  yourself  ?  " 
he  answers,  "  On  my  wealth,"  and  it  proves  that  his  wealth 
is  the  faculty  of  seeing  how  little  one  needs,  of  being  able 
to  go  without  things.*  "  Better  madness  than  pleasure — 
fiaveirjv  fioKkov  rj  '^aOeirjv,"  his  biographer  tells  us  he 
would  say.  "  If  I  caught  Aphrodite,  I  would  shoot  her,  for 
she  has  spoiled  many  beautiful  and  good  women  for  us."  ^ 

"  Back  to  nature  "  and  "  freedom  from  illusion  "  {drv^Ca) 
were  his  watchwords — a  freedom  which  he  held  that  Plato 
did  not  know.  Virtue  is  sufficient  for  happiness,  by  itself, 
without  any  addition,  unless  it  be  the  strength  of  Socrates  ; — 
virtue  is  a  matter  of  deeds,  and  needs  no  words  ;  and  the 
wise  man  is  sufficient  to  himself.     He  was  an  individualist, 

1  A  love  of  assonance  and  antithesis  is  to  be  seen  in  his  recorded 
sayings. 

^IPlsito,  Sophist,  2 Sic. 

3  It  may  not  be  quite  fanciful  to  compare  Francis  of  Assisi  and  his 
"  marriage  to  poverty." 

*  Xen.  Symp.  4,  34-44. 

*  Clement  Alex.  Strom,  ii.  20,  107,  48  5  p. 


THE  NEW  AGE  293 

in  logic  and  in  life.  He  wrote  a  great  deal ;  in  a  political 
dialogue  he  ran  down  all  the  democratic  leaders  of  Athens  ;  in 
his  Archelaos  his  old  teacher  Gorgias  ;  in  his  Aspasia  the  sons 
of  Pericles  and  Aspasia. ^  He  attacked  Plato  and  the  "  ideas," 
for  the  one  thing  real  was  for  him  the  individual.  State  and 
family  seem  to  be  improvements  on  nature,  additions,  con- 
ventions, mistakes  ; — he  avowed  himself  a  "  citizen  of  the 
world,"  Ko<TfjL07ro\iT7)<;.  He  was  the  founder  of  the  Cynics, 
a  school  which  in  its  way  did  a  good  deal  for  mankind.  They 
were  a  challenge  that  could  not  be  ignored — a  provocation 
to  Plato  and  Aristotle  as  much  as  to  the  vulgar  new  citizen 
with  his  big  house  and  his  big  meals.  Above  all  from  them 
came  a  nobler  school,  who  did  more  for  mankind,  who  cap- 
tured the  best  of  the  Romans  and  exercised  an  influence  on 
some  of  the  greatest  teachers  of  the  Christian  church — the 
Stoics. 

It  was  Diogenes  of  Sinope,^  the  follower  of  Antisthenes, 
who  carried  his  ideas  to  a  further  point,  but,  while  he  preached 
virtually  the  negation  of  all  human  life,  tempered  his  Nihilism 
with  a  touch  of  comedy.  There  is  an  air  of  conscious  ad- 
vertisement of  himself  and  his  views  that  pervades  the  many 
stories  told  of  him — the  tub,  the  lamp  at  midday,  and  the  like. 
He  was  ready  to  talk  with  anybody  ;  he  was  brilliant,  para- 
doxical, charming,  unexpected,  and  invincibly  cheerful. 
"  He  used  every  place  for  every  purpose,"  we  are  told,  and 
we  are  given  details  ;  and  one  may  surmise  that  some  of  the 
things  he  did  were  done  simply  to  startle  and  to  shock.  "  So 
he  spoke  and  so  he  acted,  in  very  truth  '  re-minting  the 
currency,'  ^  never  conceding  to  custom  what  he  did  to  nature, 
claiming  that  he  put  the  same  stamp  on  life  as  did  Herakles, 
and  setting  nothing  before  freedom.  .  .  .  Everything,  he 
said,  belonged  to  the  gods  ;  the  gods  are  friends  to  the  wise  ; 
all  things  are  in  common  between  friends  ;  therefore  all 
belonged  to  the  wise.  .  .  .  Good  birth  and  glory  and  the 
like  he  derided,  as  mere  trappings  of  wickedness  ;  the  only 
real  state  was  the  cosmos.     Women  should  be  common,  he 

1  Athenaeus,  v.  220. 

2  Here  I  overstep  a  little  the  limits  of  our  period.  The  source  is 
again  Diogenes  Laertius. 

^  j/6/ito-fia  Trapaxapdrrcov — a  very  famous  phrase  of  Diogenes  himself. 


294  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

said  ;  marriage  he  never  named,  but  as  one  persuades  or  the 
other  persuades.  Children  would  be  common  to  all.  There 
was  nothing  out  of  the  way  in  taking  anything  from  a  temple 
or  eating  the  flesh  of  any  animal ;  nor  was  there  anything 
impious  in  eating  human  flesh,  as  the  customs  of  foreigners 
proved.  .  .  .  Music  and  geometry  and  astronomy  he  neglected 
as  useless  and  needless." 

Such  a  school  could  not  fail  to  have  an  effect — an  effect 
not  lessened  by  the  deliberate  absurdities  of  Diogenes.  A 
strong  shock  was  given  to  old  opinions  ;  individualism  received 
a  new  and  tremendous  emphasis.  Plutarch  is  credited  with 
remarking  that  Alexander  realized  the  Cynic  ideal  on  its 
political  side  by  the  foundation  of  his  world-empire,  Diogenes 
was  certainly  a  contributor  to  the  making  of  the  new  world 
which  Alexander  brought  about — a  world  where  the  city-state 
hardly  counted,  where  there  was  neither  Greek  nor  barbarian, 
where  nations  were  lost  and  races  fused,  and  the  West  married 
to  the  East,  Europe  to  Asia.  Once  more,  what  was  parody 
in  the  play  of  Aristophanes  is  serious  thought  with  Antisthenes 
and  his  school,  and  it  militates  of  set  purpose  against  every 
tradition  and  every  ideal  of  which  the  Greeks  were  conscious. 

Side  by  side  with  Cynicism,  another  great  influence  was 
working  for  the  obscuration  of  the  city-state.  To  study 
philosophy  and  rhetoric  men  forsook  home  and  country. 
The  intellectual  interests  prevailed,  and  men  left  the  state 
on  one  side  to  follow  what  interested  them  more.  The  Greeks 
had  always  been  wanderers,  but  wanderers  with  a  passion  for 
home ;  now  that  passion  was  weakened.  Rhetoric  and 
philosophy  began  to  prove  themselves  international  forces 
working  for  the  breakdown  of  barriers.  Isocrates  was  an 
Athenian,  proud  of  Athens,  After  the  great  Funeral  Speech 
of  Pericles  stands  his  Panegyric.  Athens  had  been  the  saviour 
of  the  weak  in  Greece,  of  Greece  itself  ;  she  had  from  of  old 
fought  the  barbarian,  she  had  driven  back  the  Persian,  and 
received  the  Empire  of  the  Sea  as  her  reward,  given  her  by 
the  Greeks  at  large.  She  had  taught  the  Greek  world  the 
arts  of  peace,  of  government,  of  life.  She  had  led  the  way 
in  colonization.  She  had  been  a  city  of  refuge,  an  emporium 
for  the  world,  an  age-long  festival  and  reunion  for  mankind. 
'f  So  far  behind  has  our  city  left  all  others  in  thought  and 


THE  NEW  AGE  295 

language,  that  her  pupils  are  the  teachers  of  the  world,  and 
she  has  made  the  name  of  Greek  seem  no  longer  a  badge  of 
blood  but  of  mind,  and  men  are  called  Greeks  more  because 
they  have  a  part  in  our  culture  than  because  they  come  of  a 
common  stock."  How  much  Athens  had  meant  to  the 
world  was  shown  when  Sparta  took  her  place  and  the  Peace 
of  Antalkidas  was  made — violence  in  the  cities,  the  betrayal 
of  the  Greeks  of  Asia  to  the  Persian,  the  triumph  of 
Artaxerxes,  and  the  humiliation  of  all  Greece  together. 

Isocrates  cannot  be  accused  of  want  of  patriotism,  but 
he  too  could  learn  from  life.  He  saw  how  much  better 
Evagoras  of  Cyprus  had  managed  in  his  terrible  struggle 
with  Persia  than  either  Athenian  democracy  or  Spartan 
oligarchy  ;  and  the  lesson  was  not  lost  on  him.  He  lived  in 
Athens,  and  he  slowly  turned  against  the  great  Athenian 
nostrum,  this  equality  which  was  not  equal.  "  There  were 
two  equalities,"  he  wrote, ^  "  and  of  these  one  gave  the  same 
to  all  and  the  other  what  is  fitting  to  each  ;  and  they  [of  old] 
recognized  which  of  the  two  is  preferable.  They  rejected 
that  equality  that  counts  good  and  bad  worthy  of  the  same  ; 
and  they  chose  that  equality  which  honours  each  according 
to  his  deserts.  With  that  equality  they  lived  in  this  city, 
not  filling  their  magistracies  by  lot  from  all,  but  choosing  for 
each  task  the  best  men  and  the  most  fit."  It  was  the  more 
truly  democratic  way  ;  but  it  has  passed.  And  it  comes 
to  this,  that  neither  Athens  nor  Sparta  is  equal  to  the  task 
of  saving  the  Greeks  now  from  the  troubles  upon  them  ; 
Empire  has  in  turn  undone  both  of  them — for  heaven's  sake 
let  Athens  at  least  be  done  with  it ;  and  for  the  great  crusade, 
for  the  overthrow  of  the  power  that  overshadows  and  ruins 
Greece,  for  the  relief  of  all  Greek  troubles,  for  reconciliation 
among  the  states,  and  for  the  colonization  of  the  eastern 
world  anew  with  fresh  Greek  cities — Isocrates  turns  to  Philip 
of  Macedon.  It  is  not  a  failure  of  patriotism  ;  it  is  a  recogni- 
tion, almost  prophetic,  of  a  new  order  of  things,  of  a  world 
where  Greece  shall  do  everything  but  govern,  and  do  it  better 
unencumbered  by  the  fatal  gift  of  empire. 2 

Of  all  critics  of  contemporary  democracy  the  most  im- 

1  Areop.  21,  22  ;  a  document  of  the  year  355  b.g. 

2  More  upon  all  this  in  Chapter  XII. 


296  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

pressive  and  significant  is  Plato. ^  It  does  not  come  under 
our  present  purpose  to  attempt  to  discuss  the  greatest  of 
Greek  thinkers,  nor  even  his  ideal  Republic.  Great  men  and 
great  books  call  for  great  treatment.  It  is  not  enough  to 
say  that  Plato's  ideal  state  is  communistic  and  minutely 
regulated,  that  it  virtually  prolongs  slavery  and  even  extends 
it, — for  most  people  in  it  seem  slaves  in  mind  and  body  ;  they 
must  mate  and  think  and  worship  as  directed, — that  it  abolishes 
marriage  and  the  home,  and  prescribes  the  orphanage  as  the 
finest  upbringing  for  children.  Such  criticism  would  put 
the  Republic  of  Plato  on  a  level  with  those  of  Praxagora  and 
Diogenes — who  also  wrote  a  Republic  of  his  own.  Perhaps 
as  often  as  not  the  great  mind's  contribution  is  to  be  found 
not  in  its  ideas  but  in  its  outlook  on  life  at  large  and  its  treat- 
ment of  its  own  ideas  and  other  men's — breadth  of  handling, 
insight,  sympathy  and  stimulus.  Here  our  concern  is  with 
Greek  democracy,  and  if  we  go  to  Plato  for  his  view  upon  it, 
we  may  find  at  last  that  he  does  not  share  to  the  very  utmost 
the  views  of  his  characters.  When  Socrates  criticizes  Pericles 
because,  as  he  hears,  Pericles  has  made  the  Athenians  idle 
and  cowardly  and  talkative  and  so  forth,  the  criticism  is 
intended  to  stir  up  Callicles  ;  however  much  it  is  meant  in 
fact,  its  design  is  to  provoke. ^  So  in  the  Republic  some  part 
of  Plato's  purpose  may  be  by  over-statement  to  set  thought 
in  motion.  For  his  real  feeling — so  great  a  man  has  many 
real  feelings.  "  My  friend,  I  said,  do  not  attack  the  multitude  ; 
they  will  change  their  minds,  if,  not  in  an  aggressive  spirit, 
but  gently  and  with  the  view  of  soothing  them  and  removing 
their  dislike  of  over-education,  you  show  them  your  philoso- 
phers as  they  really  are,  and  describe  as  you  were  just  now 
doing  their  character  and  profession,  and  then  mankind  will 
see  that  he  of  whom  you  are  speaking  is  not  such  as  they 
supposed.  .  .  .  Who  can  be  at  enmity  with  one  who  loves 
them  ?  who  that  is  himself  gentle  and  free  from  envy  will  be 
jealous  of  one  in  whom  there  is  no  jealousy  ?      Nay,  let  me 

^  Dr.  Adam  held  that  "  Plato's  whole  account  of  democracy  and 
the  democratical  man,  in  spite  of  manifest  exaggerations,  brings 
Athens  nearer  to  us  than  almost  any  monument  of  ancient  literature, 
Aristophanes  alone  excepted  "  ;    on  Rep.  viii.  SS/a. 

2  See  Chapter  IV.  p.  1 1 1. 


THE  NEW  AGE  297 

answer  for  you,  that  in  a  few  this  harsh  temper  may  be  found, 
but  not  in  the  majority  of  mankind.  .  .  .  And  do  you  not 
also  think,  as  I  do,  that  the  harsh  feehng  which  the  many 
entertain  toward  philosophy  originates  in  the  pretenders, 
who  rush  in  uninvited,  and  are  always  abusing  them  and 
finding  fault  with  them,  who  make  persons  instead  of  things 
the  theme  of  their  conversation  ?  and  nothing  can  be  more 
unbecoming  in  philosophers  than  this."  ^ 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Seventh  Letter,  Plato — or  some 
imitator  or  compiler  writing  for  him — describes  his  youth : 
how  among  the  Thirty  were  kinsmen  and  acquaintances  of  his 
own  ;  and  how,  as  was  natural  with  a  young  man,  he  supposed 
they  would  mend  national  life  and  bring  it  in  line  with  justice  ; 
and  how  "  in  a  short  time  these  men  made  the  former  constitu- 
tion look  golden  "  ;  and  how  he  was  repelled  by  their  deeds  ; 
how  the  Thirty  fell  and  the  Democracy  came  back,  and, 
though  many  things  were  not  quite  to  his  mind,  in  the  main 
there  was  moderation  ;  and  then  how  the  judicial  murder  of 
Socrates  led  him  to  feel  the  difficulty  of  poHtical  life.  Whoever 
wrote  the  passage,  it  represents  the  experience.  Plato  was 
of  aristocratic  origin,  and  his  heart  was  engaged  with  the 
Thirty  and  with  Socrates,  and  what  befell  in  Athens  might 
well  (in  the  phrase  used  by  Wordsworth  in  describing  the 
events  of  1793)  throw  him  out  of  the  pale  of  love.^  But  there 
was  much,  there  always  will  be  much,  in  democracy  to  shock  or 
disquiet  a  thoughtful  spectator — too  much  impulse,  change  of 
mind,  headlong  fickleness,  too  much  of  the  spur  of  the  moment.  ^ 
Pericles  had  glorified  the  Athenian  amateur  in  his  Funeral 
Speech — his  readiness,  his  adaptabihty,  his  gay  capacity  for 
every  phase  of  life.  Plato  finds  in  Athenian  democracy  a 
darker  strain — it  is  essentially  absence  of  principle  made  into 
a  principle.^  But,  as  the  Greek  orator  says,  there  is  nothing 
like  hearing  the  man  himself.  ^ 

Democracy  comes  into  being  after  the  poor  have  conquered 

1  Rep.  vi.  499D-500A  (Jowett).  ^  Prelude,  xi.  176. 

^  Paraphrasing  Polybius,  vi.  56. 

*  Nettleship,  Lectures  on  Plato's  Republic,  p.  310.  See  also  the 
interesting  chapter  on  Plato  in  Mr.  Livingstone's  Greek  Genius. 

6  What  foUows  comes  from  Rep.  viii.,  especially  pp.  557,  558, 
562-565.  I  have  compressed,  and  omitted  the  interlocutor  with  his 
"  Certainly  "  and  "  Yes,"  and  used  Jowett's  translation. 


298  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

their  opponents,  slaughtering  some  and  banishing  some,  while 
the  rest  they  admit  on  equal  terms  to  citizenship  and  magis- 
tracies ;  and  as  a  rule  their  magistrates  are  elected  by  lot. 
Now  what  is  their  manner  of  life,  and  what  sort  of  a  government 
wiU  they  have  ?  For  man  and  constitution  will  resemble 
each  other,  and  both  be  democratic.  They  will  be  free  ;  the 
city  will  be  full  of  freedom  and  frank  speech,  and  full  of  liberty 
to  do  whatever  one  pleases.  So  there  will  be  in  it  the  greatest 
variety  of  human  natures  ;  and,  it  would  follow,  it  ought  to  be 
the  most  beautiful  of  all  states — like  an  embroidered  robe 
made  gay  with  every  kind  of  flower.  This  liberty  to  do  what- 
ever one  chooses  will  mean  a  complete  assortment  of  con- 
stitutions ;  anyone  who  (like  ourselves)  wants  to  found  a 
state,  has  only  to  go  to  a  democratically  governed  city,  and  there 
he  will  find  a  whole  bazar  {iravro'ircokiov)  full  of  constitu- 
tions, where  he  can  pick  what  he  pleases  and  have  patterns 
enough.  There  will  be  no  necessity  for  you  to  rule  or  to  hold 
office  in  this  state — no,  not  even  if  you  are  fit  for  it ;  no 
necessity  for  you  to  be  ruled,  if  you  don't  want  to  ;  nor  to  go 
to  war,  when  your  fellow-citizens  go  to  war  ;  nor  to  be  at  peace 
when  the  rest  are — unless,  of  course,  you  feel  like  it ;  even  if 
some  law  forbids  you  to  be  a  magistrate  or  a  dicast,  that  is 
no  reason  for  your  not  being  either,  if  you  have  the  fancy  ; — 
really,  isn't  such  a  way  of  life  divinely  pleasant  for  the  moment  ? 
Then  think  of  Democracy's  forbearance, — there  is  nothing 
small  about  her, — her  contempt  for  all  our  fine  talk  about  the 
special  training  of  the  ruler  ;  no  matter  what  a  man's  equip- 
ment may  be,  if  only  he  says  he  is  a  friend  of  the  many  !  It 
will  be  a  charming  commonwealth,  anarchic  and  polychrome, 
with  equality  for  all,  equal  and  unequal,  whatever  they  are. 

And  now  for  the  Democratic  man  and  his  mind.  His 
mind  will  be  swept  clear  of  modesty,  which  would  be  called 
silliness,  of  temperance, — mere  unmanliness! — of  moderation, 
as  being  boorish  and  illiberal ;  these  are  oligarchic  elements  in 
his  nature,  and  they  are  expelled  by  a  rabble  of  useless  appe- 
tites. "  And  when  they  have  emptied  and  swept  clean  the 
soul  of  him  who  is  now  in  their  power  and  who  is  being 
initiated  by  them  in  great  mysteries,  the  next  thing  is  to  bring 
back  to  their  house  insolence  and  anarchy  and  waste  and 
impudence  in  bright  array,  having  garlands  on  their  heads, 


THE  NEW  AGE  299 

and  a  great  company  with  them,  hymning  their  praises,  and 
calHng  them  by  sweet  names."  He  beheves  in  a  true  de- 
mocracy of  incHnations ;  they  are  all  alike  and  must  be 
equally  honoured.  So  he  plunges  through  life  from  one  thing 
to  another — drink,  music,  water-drinking,  gymnastics,  phil- 
osophy, politics,  war — 

Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 
Both  law  and  impulse — 

a  jolly  life,  a  generous  life,  motley  and  manifold — an  epitome  of 
all  sorts  of  things,  real  happiness  ! 

Such  is  the  progress  of  Democracy.  She  drinks  too  deep 
of  the  strong  wine  of  freedom,  and  then,  if  her  rulers  will 
not  give  her  more  still — they  are  cursed  oligarchs.  The 
same  spirit  pervades  the  whole  state — the  home,  the  school- 
room, the  very  stables— master  and  pupil,  the  old  man  and  the 
young  so  pleasant  and  witty  together,  the  sexes  of  course 
equally  free,  and  the  bought  slave  as  good  as  his  buyer  or  her 
buyer.  It  does  not  even  stop  there — the  bitch  is  as  good  as  her 
mistress  (as  the  proverb  says),  and  the  horses  and  the  donkeys 
march  the  streets  with  a  very  free  spirit  and  a  very  dignified 
gait,  and  you  will  please  make  way  for  them.  Everything 
ready  to  burst  with  liberty. 

So  this  is  Democracy  drawn  for  us  by  a  man  of  genius 
in  "  one  of  the  most  royal  and  magnificent  pieces  of  writing 
in  the  whole  range  of  literature,  whether  ancient  or  modern  "  ^ 
— "  a  land  of  Hedonism,  peopled  by  Anarchy  and  Wayward- 
ness, and  darkened  by  the  shadow  of  the  Tyranny  to  which  at 
last  it  must  succumb."  2     Is  it  a  true  picture  ? 

First  of  all,  there  is  a  reply  on  the  philosophic  side,  the 
classical  example  of  which  is  Milton's  Areopagitica.  We  must 
have  freedom  if  we  are  to  grow.  Out  of  the  disorder  and  the 
challenge  of  Athenian  democracy  grew  Plato.  In  Plato's 
Republic,  it  has  been  pointed  out,  Socrates'  shrift  would  have 
been  short ;  there  is  to  be  little  intercourse  there  with  men 
of  other  minds,  little  travel,  "  and  v/hen  they  come  home, 
they  will  tell  the  young  that  the  customs  and  constitutions  of 
other  men  are  inferior  to  ours  " — like  Englishmen  who  visit 
America  and  the  Colonies. 

1  So  Adam,  on  Plato,  Rep.  5590.  2  Adam  on  5570. 


300  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

We  can  feel  for  ourselves  how  Greece  began  to  decline  when 
she  took  to  thinking  she  had  nothing  to  learn  from  the  bar- 
barian ;  how  the  later  Greeks  fall  below  the  people  of  Hero- 
dotus ;  and  how  the  men  stand  out  who,  like  Xenophon  and 
Alexander,  consorted  with  the  foreigner  and  learnt  his  mind 
and  respected  him  and  grew  by  it.  Plato's  ideal  state  would 
have  been  more  stifling  than  the  later  Athens,  or  any  other 
known  example  of  insular  life.  A  state  or  a  constitution  may 
be  judged  from  many  points  of  view,  but  it  is  at  least  arguable 
that  that  state  is  best  which  offers  the  most  varied  stimulus 
to  each  citizen  to  think,  to  explore,  to  be  to  the  utmost.  If 
this  is  true,  then  there  is  something  more  to  be  said  for  Athens 
than  Plato  allows  in  this  *'  most  royal  and  magnificent "  of 
travesties. 

But  in  so  saying  we  move  on  to  a  further  point.  Does 
Athens  in  fact  merit  this  brilliant  description,  does  she  deserve 
the  censure  ?  It  is  quite  clear  from  the  history  of  our  period, 
and,  still  more,  of  the  generations  that  follow,  that  Democracy 
as  conceived  by  the  Athenians  had  played  its  part  in  the  world, 
and  that  it  was  becoming  obsolete.  It  was  not  so  much  that 
Democracy  itself  was  outworn,  but  that  so  far  no  system 
had  been  successfully  thought  out  for  the  application  of 
Democratic  principles  to  any  state  much  larger  than  an  ordinary 
Greek  town.^  The  hour  had  come  when  all  was  to  depend  on 
national  powers  of  larger  dimensions,  and  for  them  no  scheme 
had  yet  been  achieved  that  would  make  Democracy  possible. 
In  world-politics,  therefore.  Democracy  was  to  recede.  But  if 
we  study  Athens  even  in  this  century  when  she  is  falling  into 
the  background,  do  we  find  that  Plato's  censures  apply  to  her  ? 
There  is,  of  course,  endless  variety  of  mind  and  thought  in 
Athens — it  is  a  bazar  of  opinion,  outlook,  principle,  and  every- 
thing. Yet  government  is  stable,  and  life  and  property  are 
secure.  If  we  except,  as  we  have  to  except,  the  government 
of  subject  provinces,  which  was  now  no  part  of  the  duties  of 
the  Athenian  people,  every  other  function  of  government  is 
managed  better  than  in  any  other  state  of  the  day  of  which 
we  have  any  knowledge.  Athens  is  still  the  pleasantest  place 
in  the  world,  and  her  citizens,  despite  all  their  genius  for 
variety,  as  reasonable  and  as  obedient  to  law  as  those  of  any 
^  The  Achaean  League  was  not  really  very  democratic. 


THE  NEW  AGE  301 

other  state.  She  offers  the  surest  and  the  happiest  home  for 
genius  still.  Human  life  was  still  possible  in  Athens,  as  it 
could  not  have  been  possible  in  a  land  of  Hedonism,  peopled 
by  Anarchy  and  Waywardness — human  life,  too,  that  was 
more  truly  and  fully  human  than  anywhere  else,  Greece 
had  still  abundance  of  life — life  enough  to  quicken  the  nearer 
East  ;  to  learn  of  Persia,  of  Syria,  and  of  Egypt ;  to  make  all 
that  imperishable  contribution  to  mankind  which  is  summed  up 
in  the  history  of  Hellenism  and  of  Constantinople  ;  and  Athens 
was  still  the  very  heart  of  all  Greek  life. 

"  There  is  a  great  deal  of  ruin  in  a  nation." 


CHAPTER   X 

THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION 

I 

SOMEWHERE  about  the  year  395  a  young  man  arrived 
in  Athens  from  the  Black  Sea.  He  had  always  been 
hearing  about  Greece,  above  all  (as  he  politely  tells  the 
Athenians)  about  Athens,  and  he  had  conceived  very  naturally 
a  young  man's  desire  to  travel.  So  his  father  gave  him  some 
considerable  sum  of  money,  and  sent  him  off  in  charge  of  two 
shiploads  of  wheat  "  to  trade  and  to  see  the  world  " — Kara 
ifiTTopiav  Kol  Kara  Oecop'iav. 

He  reached  Athens  at  a  very  interesting  moment.  Great 
movements  were  in  the  air.  It  looked  as  if  at  last,  under  the 
stimulus  of  Pharnabazos  the  satrap  of  Daskyleion  and  Conon 
the  Athenian  exile,  the  King  of  Persia  was  really  meaning 
to  do  something  with  the  fleet  which  had  been  so  long  building 
in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean.  Athenian  embassies  had  from 
time  to  time  been  sent  to  Susa  to  make  it  clear  to  the  King 
that  it  was  neither  just  nor  expedient  that  one  city,  viz. 
Sparta,  should  be  mistress  of  the  Greeks ;  ^  though  the  am- 
bassadors did  not  always  reach  Susa,  for  on  one  occasion  at 
least  they  were  caught  by  a  Spartan  admiral,  sent  to  Sparta, 
and  there  put  to  death. ^  But  by  now  apparently  an 
ambassador  had  come  from  Asia.  A  Rhodian,  by  name  Timo- 
crates,  had  been  sent  by  the  satrap  Tithraustes,  with  a  sub- 
stantial guarantee  of  Persian  intentions.  With  silver  to 
the  value  of  fifty  gold  talents  he  had  been  moving  from  one 
city  to  another,  where  there  was  ill-will  to  Sparta  ;  he  had  seen 
the  leading  statesmen  ;  and  the  result  of  his  mission  was  a  new 
confidence  that  Persia  was  in  earnest  and  that  it  would  be  safe 
to  take  steps  long  contemplated.  For  the  moment  Sparta  was 
^  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  68.  ^  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  2,  i. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  303 

still  supreme,  but  she  was  not  to  be  so  for  very  long.  The 
battle  of  Haliartos  in  the  autumn  of  395  was  made  a  decisive 
one  by  the  death  of  Lysander  under  the  city  wall  and  the  extor- 
tion of  a  truce  from  King  Pausanias  for  the  recovery  of  his  body. 
The  moving  spirit  of  Sparta  was  gone — the  mind  and  character 
that  had  finished  for  her  the  long  Peloponnesian  War  with  an 
unequalled  triumph  and  had  won  her  an  undreamed-of  empire. 
The  Spartans  sent  to  Asia  to  recall  King  Agesilaos,  and  before 
he  reached  the  borders  of  Boeotia  the  battle  of  Cnidos  had  been 
fought  and  won  by  Conon  in  his  capacity  of  Persian  admiral, 
and  the  Spartan  sea-power  was  ended  (August  395).^ 

For  the  son  of  Sopaios — in  the  absence  of  his  own  name 
we  have  to  use  his  father's — as  for  all  others  who  travelled 
by  sea  for  trade  and  to  see  the  world,  all  these  international 
relations  were  supremely  relevant.  But  for  our  present 
purpose  high  policy  and  great  armaments  must  be  mere  back- 
ground, felt  but  not  emphasized.  He  does  not,  like  other 
Pontic  youths  in  Athens,  bring  us  among  the  philosophers. ^ 
Our  interest  is  rather  in  the  world  of  commerce  and  finance  in 
which  the  young  man  moved,  and  in  the  people  we  meet  there — 
in  their  personalities  as  far  as  we  can  distinguish  them,  in  their 
concerns  and  outlooks,  and  at  last  in  the  fortunes  of  one  house- 
hold— a  family  group  outstanding  and  significant. 

"  My  father,"  says  the  young  man,  "  is  Sopaios,  whom 
all  who  sail  to  the  Pontos  know  to  be  so  intimately  associated 
with  Satyros,  that  he  rules  a  great  deal  of  his  country  and  is  in 
charge  of  all  his  powers."  Satyros,  as  he  says,  bore  a  very 
well-known  name — so  familiar  that  he  needs  explain  no  more 
to  an  Athenian  audience. 

At  the  entrance  to  the  Sea  of  Azov,  on  or  very  near  the  site 
of  the  modern  town  of  Kertsch,  stood  the  city  of  Panticapaeum, 
or  Bosporos,  as  it  was  often  called.  ^    A  Milesian  settlement,  and 

^  The  battle  is  dated  by  the  fact  that  Agesilaos  heard  the  news  of 
it  on  the  Boeotian  frontier  on  14  August  (eclipse  of  the  sun). 

2  See  Diogenes  Laertius,  vi.  i,  for  several  of  them.  One  of  them 
promised  Antisthenes  fine  things,  "  when  his  ship  of  dried  fish  should 
arrive."  Diogenes,  the  Cynic,  also  came  from  Pontus,  the  son  of  a 
banker  at  Sinope. 

^  What  follows  comes  from  Strabo  (cc.  309-311)  in  the  main. 
Polybius,  iv.  38-42,  has  a  long  discussion  as  to  the  effects  of  the  great 
rivers  and  their  silt  in  the  Sea  of  Azov  and  the  Black  Sea. 


304  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

built  all  over  a  hill  twenty  stades  round,  it  had  a  harbour  for 
thirty  ships.  Between  it  and  Theodosia  (still  so  called)  lay 
good  wheat  lands,  some  five  hundred  and  thirty  stades  in 
length,  dotted  with  villages,  and  also  a  town  and  harbour 
called  Nymphaion.  Theodosia,  another  Milesian  settlement, 
could  accommodate  a  hundred  ships,  and  commanded  a  further 
plain  of  good  land.  The  region  was  ruled  by  a  dynasty,  which 
came  into  possession  of  it  about  438  B.C.,  and  held  it  down 
to  the  days  of  the  great  Mithradates — "  rulers  "  they  were 
called  in  formal  documents,  "  tyrants "  or  "  dynasts "  in 
common  speech,  but  most  of  them  were  admittedly  wise  and 
moderate  sovereigns.  Satyros  was  the  fourth  of  his  house, 
it  appears,  and  succeeded  his  predecessor  in  407.  At  this  time 
it  seems  likely  that  Athens  held  Nymphaion,  for  Aeschines 
says  that  the  maternal  grandfather  of  Demosthenes,  Gylon  by 
name,  an  exile  under  impeachment,  betrayed  it  to  "  the 
tyrants  "  and  received  a  reward  in  land,  "  the  so-called  Kepoi," 
and  a  Scythian  wife,  whose  daughter  afterwards  bore  Demos- 
thenes, "  Scythian  on  his  mother's  side,  a  barbarian,  who 
speaks  Greek,  but  whose  villainy  is  not  native  to  us."  ^  As 
Satyros  was  definitely  in  friendly  relations  with  Athens  "  before 
the  disaster  in  the  Hellespont,"  ^  and  remained  so  afterwards, ^ 
and  as  all  chance  of  holding  foreign  dependencies  was  swept 
away  from  Athens  by  that  event,  the  betrayal  of  Nymphaeum 
to  the  friendly  neighbour  was  probably  not  an  unpatriotic  act.  ^ 

From  of  old  the  Pontic  wheat  trade  had  been  of  the  highest 
importance.  Herodotus  tells  us  of  Scythians  somewhere  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  Borysthenes  (the  Dnieper)  "  who  till 
the  ground  and  sow  corn  not  for  food  but  to  sell,"  and  he 
describes  how  Xerxes  at  Abydos  saw  wheat-ships  from  Pontus 
sailing  through  the  Hellespont  on  their  way  to  Aegina  and  the 
Peloponnesos.^  Athens,  above  all  peoples,  lived  upon  im- 
ported wheat,  as  Demosthenes  more  than  once  points  out.* 
Socrates  bears  witness  to  the  energy  and  spirit  of  the  corn 
trade  :  "  the  dealers  are  lovers  of  wheat ;    for,  you  know, 

1  Aeschines,  c.  Ctesiph.  §  172. 

2  Cf.  Lysias,  Mantith.  §  4.  ^  Isocrates,  Trapez.  §  57. 
*  Schaefer,  Dem.  u.  seine  Zeit  (ed.  i),  i.  237  f. 

6  Herodotus,  iv.  17,  and  vii.  147. 
•Demosthenes,  Lept.  31  ;   de  Cor.  87. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  305 

through  their  extraordinary  love  of  wheat,  wherever  they  hear 
it  is  most  abundant,  they  go  sailing  off  for  it — over  the  Aegaean, 
across  the  Euxine,  across  the  Sicilian  Sea.  And  then,  when  they 
have  got  as  much  as  ever  they  can,  they  bring  it  over  the  sea — 
yes,  and  keep  it  with  them  on  the  ship  they  are  sailing  on 
themselves.  And  when  they  need  money,  they  will  not  unload 
it  at  haphazard,  in  any  place  wherever  they  may  happen  to  be, 
but  wherever  they  hear  it  stands  highest  [n/jbaadai,  a  play  on 
"  honour  "  and  "  price  "],  wherever  men  set  most  store  by  it, 
they  bring  it  and  hand  it  over  to  these  people.  Your  father 
was  just  as  fond  of  agriculture.  You're  joking,  Socrates,  said 
Ischomachus."-^  It  was  no  joke.  King  Agis,  during  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  looked  from  Deceleia  and  saw  wheat-ships 
in  great  numbers  running  into  the  Peiraieus,  and  realized  that 
it  was  useless  to  ravage  the  land  if  food  came  from  the  sea^  and 
sent  Clearchus  off  to  Byzantium. ^  Five  years  later  when 
Lysander  captured  the  Athenian  fleet  in  the  Hellespont,  the 
wheat-ships  came  no  more,  and  Athens  fell.  Fifty  years 
later  Philip  again  saw  that  to  deal  with  Athens  he  must 
hold  Byzantium.  ^  Still  later  *  Polybius  emphasizes  the  import- 
ance of  Byzantium — "  by  sea  it  so  completely  commands  the 
entrance  to  the  Pontus  that  no  merchant  can  sail  in  or  out 
against  its  will.  The  Pontus  is  rich  in  many  things  which  the 
rest  of  the  world  requires  for  the  support  of  life  .  .  .  those 
commodities  which  are  the  first  necessities  of  existence,  viz. 
cattle  and  slaves,  are  confessedly  supplied  to  us  by  the  districts 
round  the  Pontus  in  greater  quantity  and  better  quality  than 
from  elsewhere  ;  and  for  luxuries,  they  supply  us  with  honey, 
wax,  and  salt-fish  in  great  abundance  ;  while  of  the  commodities 
that  abound  with  us,  they  take  oil  and  every  kind  of  wine.  As 
to  corn,  there  is  interchange,  in  good  seasons  they  export  it, 
sometimes  they  import  it."  ^ 

Miletus  had  once  ruled  the  trade  in  the  Crimean  region,  but 
she  had  fallen  to  the  Persian,  and  her  heir  was  Athens.  When 
one  reflects  that  oil  stood  for  the  Greeks  in  the  place  held 
among  us  by  butter,  soap,  and  electric  light,  and  that  the  olive 
does  not  grow  in  Southern  Russia,  the  exchange  of  grain  for 

1  Xen.  Oecon.  20,  28.  2  Hellenica,  i.  i,  35,  36. 

3  Demosthenes,  de  Cor.  Zj.  *  About  150  B.C. 

fi  Polybius,  iv.  38. 
20 


3o6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

wine  and  oil  grows  more  significant ;  and  we  may  remember, 
with  a  new  pleasure  in  it,  the  corner  which  the  philosopher 
Thaies  is  said  to  have  made  one  good  year  in  oil  presses.* 
Solon  had  turned  Athenian  attention  to  the  commercial  import- 
ance of  the  olive,  and  Peisistratos  to  that  of  wine  ;  and  archae- 
ologists tell  us  of  the  widely  found  remains  of  Greek  wine 
jars  of  the  sixth  and  fifth  century  all  over  the  Mediter- 
ranean. The  trade  between  Pontus  and  Greece  was  very 
great,  concerned  as  it  was  with  the  foimdations  of  life. 
Grain  was  raised  on  the  southern  shore  ;  round  Calpe,  for 
instance,  we  saw  how  Xenophon  noted  a  good  soil  that 
produced  barley,  wheat,  and  other  cereals — "  everything 
except  olives."  ^  We  learn,  however,  from  Theophrastus 
that  the  corn  grown  on  the  northern  shore,  though  inferior 
in  quality  to  that  of  the  southern,  bore  exportation  better 
and  could  be  kept  for  a  longer  time.^ 

All  through  the  fourth  century  the  friendliest  relations  were 
maintained  by  Athens  with  the  dynasts  of  Bosporos.  Com- 
pliments, immunities,  statues — every  kind  of  honour  was  paid 
to  them ;  and  they  deserved  their  honours.  For  it  appears 
that  the  export  duty  of  one-thirtieth  levied  on  exported  wheat 
at  their  ports  Leucon,  the  successor  of  Satyros,  remitted  to 
Athenian  traders  * — a  remission  which  must,  as  Grote  says, 
have  thrown  into  Athenian  hands  almost  the  whole  exporting 
trade.  The  son  of  Sopaios,  when  he  comes  before  the  Athenian 
court,  makes  the  most  of  Athenian  privileges  at  Bosporos — 
"  it  is  fit,"  he  says,  "  that  you  should  think  of  Satyros  and  of 
my  father,  who  always  make  more  account  of  you  than  of  the 
rest  of  the  Greeks,  and  many  a  time  before  now  have  from  the 
scarcity  of  wheat  sent  the  ships  of  the  other  traders  away 
empty  and  given  you  freedom  to  export  it ;  yes,  and  in  private 
contracts,  of  which  they  are  judges,  you  get  not  merely  what  is 
fair  and  right,  but  more  than  that." 

The  young  Bosporan  then  got  his  two  ships  loaded  with 
wheat  and  set  sail.     Neither  he  nor  his  advocate  thought  about 

1  Cf.  Chapter  II.  p.  41.  See  the  address  of  Mr.  J.  L.  Myres  on 
'■  The  Geographical  Aspect  of  Greek  Colonization  "  in  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Classical  Association,  191 1. 

'^  Anab,  vi.  4,  6  ;  and  vi.  6,  i. 

*  Theophrastus,  H.P.  viii.  4,  5.  *  Demosthenes,  Lept.  31. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  307 

posterity,  and  they  have  left  us  no  account  of  the  voyage.  A 
hint  escapes  when  another  transaction  is  mentioned.  It  is 
alleged  that  he  borrowed  money  of  a  certain  Stratocles,  and  he 
explains  that  he  did  so  to  draw  as  much  as  he  could  of  his 
property  from  home  ;  Stratocles  was  to  pay  down  300  staters 
in  gold  and  draw  on  Sopaioswhen  he  reached  Bosporos;  and  the 
object  was  to  avoid  risk,  "  especially  as  the  Spartans  were  at 
that  time  rulers  of  the  sea."  ^  For,  as  Isocrates  tells  us,  speak- 
ing more  particularly  of  the  years  between  386  and  380,  under 
Spartan  rule  "  the  seas  are  infested  with  pirates."  ^  We  come 
on  various  instances,  in  the  Greek  speeches  that  survive  for  us, 
of  men  being  captured  by  pirates,  and  held  to  ransom,  or  dying 
of  their  wounds.  Curiously  enough,  in  attacking  the  corn- 
dealers,  Lysias  speaks  of  these  risks.  The  dealers  "  are  so  glad 
to  see  your  disasters,  that  they  are  the  first  to  hear  of  them  from 
others  or  they  make  them  up  themselves — that  the  ships  in  the 
Pontus  are  wrecked,  or  taken  by  the  Spartans  just  as  they  set  sail, 
or  that  the  marts  are  closed,  or  the  treaty  is  to  be  renounced 
...  so  that  sometimes  even  in  time  of  peace  we  are  besieged 
by  them."  2  The  son  of  Sopaios,  however,  and  his  ships  escaped 
all  these  perils,  passed  Byzantium  and  the  Hellespont,  picked 
up  the  three  islands  and  Euboea,  then  Sunium  ;  and  then,  if  we 
may  imagine  it  to  be  morning  and  borrow  a  description  from 
the  year  387,  we  can  picture  him  amid  "  fishing-smacks  and 
ferries  full  of  men  from  the  islands,"  and"  merchant- vessels 
laden  some  with  wheat  and  others  with  merchandise  "*  sailing 
down  into  the  very  centre  of  the  world's  commerce,  the 
Peiraieus. 

It  might  be  possible  to  conjecture  some  of  his  adventures 
there — his  engagements  with  the  Pentecostologoi  and  other 
harbour  officials,  and  then  with  the  dealers,  metics  mostly,  ^ 
who  bought  his  wheat  in  such  lots  and  parcels  as  the  law 
allowed,  if  they  were  being  watched,  or,  otherwise,  as  they 
could.  It  is  easy  to  suppose  him  impressed  with  the  variety 
and  the  business  of  the  place — ships  in  and  out  every  day, 
loading   and   unloading   every   kind   of   cargo.     Two   things 

1  Isocrates,  Trapez.  35,  36.  2  isocrates,  Paneg.  115. 

^  Lysias,  xxii.  14 — Wilamowitz  dates  the  speech  386. 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  i,  23. 

'"  Cf.  Lysias,  xxii.  5  ;   and  [Dem.]  xxxiv. 


3o8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

appear  to  stand  out,  viz.,  that  a  very  large  part  of  the  carrying 
trade  of  Greece  was  in  the  hands  of  Athenian  citizens  or  metics, 
and  that  the  Peiraieus,  in  spite  of  wars,  though  empires  fell 
and  war  fleets  were  sunk,  was  and  remained  the  great  place 
of  exchange  for  the  world's  business.  A  moment's  reflection 
on  such  things  as  the  place  once  held  in  Europe  by  the  great 
fairs,  the  difference  made  in  commerce  by  railways  ^  and 
commercial  travellers  and  the  swift  transit  of  goods  in  sample 
and  in  bulk,  and  the  large  percentage  of  British  imports  that 
come  in  to  go  out  again  very  quickly,  will  suggest  the  signifi- 
cance of  a  place  to  which  all  ships  came.  The  Athenian  oligarch, 
thirty  years  before,  had  spoken  of  the  gathering  of  imports 
from  all  the  world,  from  Sicily  to  Pontus  and  Egypt,  and  we 
have  seen  the  list  the  comic  poet  made  of  them  in  428. ^  Corinth 
had  learnt  to  the  full  the  meaning  of  Hippias'  words,  that  a 
free  Athens  would  be  her  undoing.  What  is  more,  they  that 
take  the  sword  perish  with  the  sword,  and  thirty  years  of  war 
had  injured  Corinth  even  if  Sparta  came  out  mistress.  In 
these  very  years  (393  or  392)  Corinth  was  united  with  Argos 
— amalgamated  in  some  way,  very  galling  to  the  national 
feeling  of  a  section  of  the  community,  whose  views  Xenophon 
represents  in  vigorous  language.  ^  Athens,  as  Isocrates  boasts, ^ 
stood  open,  a  hospitable  city  for  the  prosperous  and  the  un- 
fortunate, the  most  delightful  of  resorts  for  the  one,  and  for 
the  other  the  safest  of  refuges  ;  "  and  furthermore  as  no  people 
has  a  land  wholly  self-sufficient,  but  some  things  fall  short 
of  what  is  needed,  and  of  others  more  than  enough  is  pro- 
duced, and  there  rose  great  difficulty  as  to  where  to  send 
the  over-produce  or  to  make  good  the  deficiency,  she  came 
to  their  aid  in  these  difficulties  too.  For  she  made  the 
Peiraieus  a  mart  {ifiiroptov)  in  the  very  midst  of  Greece, 
so  that  the  commodities  which  it  is  hard  to  gather  from 
the   rest   of    mankind,    one    thing    from    this    people    and 

1  Railways  make  and  unmake  ports.  London,  thanks  to  railways, 
has  killed  a  good  many  of  her  rivals  of  earlier  days.  Cf.  Sir  Douglas 
Owen,  Ocean  Trade  and  Shipping,  p.  9. 

2  Hermippos,  in  Chapter  II.  p.  45. 

3  See  Chapter  XII.  p.  391.  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  4,  6.  The  eventual 
rival  of  Athens  for  Mediterranean  trade  was  Rhodes,  and  Rhodes  was 
scarcely  twenty  years  old,  as  a  single  united  city. 

*  Isocrates,  Paneg.  41.  42. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  309 

another  elsewhere,  it  is  easy  to  obtain  one  and  all  from 
her."  1 

The  same  point  is  made  by  the  author  of  the  remarkable 
little  tract  on  Revenues  {-rropoL),  which  belongs  to  the  first 
half  of  the  fourth  century — perhaps,  though  this  is  doubtful, 
from  the  pen  of  Xenophon.  One  might  reasonably  think 
Athens  the  very  centre  of  Greece  and  of  all  the  world ;  whoever 
would  go  from  one  extreme  end  of  Greece  to  the  other  must 
pass  by  Athens  or  sail  by  her  (i,  6).^  Athens  is  the  pleasantest 
and  most  profitable  city  in  the  world  for  trade  (3,  i)  ;  her 
haven  is  easily  made  whatever  wind  blows  (i,  7),  and  it  is 
convenient  when  you  get  there  (3,  i).  In  most  places  when  a 
ship  discharges  she  has  to  wait  till  she  can  get  a  return  freight, 
for  their  local  currencies  are  not  serviceable  elsewhere  ;  but 
in  Athens,  there  are  return  freights  of  every  kind  to  be  had — 
everything  that  man  needs,  in  short — and  moreover  her  cur- 
rency is  good  everywhere,  so  the  ship  can  unload  and  be  off 
at  once  with  cargo  or  cash,  as  the  merchant  pleases  (3,  2).^ 

Athens  ought,  the  writer  holds,  to  pay  special  attention  to 
her  metics,  to  abolish  all  unprofitable  limitations  and  disquali- 
fications put  on  them,  to  do  honour  to  traders  and  ship-captains, 
whose  ships  or  wares  are  remarkable,  and  to  build  (virtually) 
hotels  for  them  near  the  docks,  and  exchanges  for  their  business 
in  suitable  places,  which  might  at  once  be  ornamental  and 
useful.  For  it  is  clear  to  him  that  the  more  people  frequent 
the  place  and  settle,  the  more  will  be  the  imports  and  exports, 

^  See  Aristotle,  Pol.  vii.  6,  4,  1327a,  on  a  city's  needs  of  exports  and 
imports  for  herself  ;  "  those  who  make  themselves  a  market  for  the 
world  only  do  so  for  the  sake  of  revenue." 

2  Strabo,  c.  286,  claims  this  centrality  in  a  later  day  for  Italy  ;  the 
civilization  of  Gaul  and  Spain  shifted  the  world's  commercial  centre 
Westward,  as  the  rise  of  the  West  Indies  and  America  did  it  again  in 
the  sixteenth  century. 

^  Cf .  Sir  Douglas  Owen,  Ocean  Trade  and  Shipping,  p.  1 1  : 
"  Glasgow,  like  Liverpool,  is  in  a  favoured  position  among  the  great 
cargo  ports — as  compared,  for  example,  with  London — owing  to 
the  volume  of  her  export  trade  ;  for  a  port  which  can  supply  an  un- 
laden ship  with  an  outward  cargo,  instead  of  sending  her  away  in 
ballast  to  seek  elsewhere,  is  a  port  which  appeals  to  owners."  On  the 
previous  page  he  shows  how  London,  on  the  other  hand,  is  what 
Isocrates  would  call  the  efnropLov  for  the  tea  trade,  and  supplies  Glasgow 
and  Liverpool  with  their  tea. 


310  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  with  them  public  revenues  and  expenditure — blessings  for 
everybody.  Metics  might  be  relieved  from  serving  in  the 
army  with  citizens,  partly  because  they  would  prefer  the 
release,  and  partly — a  touch  of  Greek  feeling  and  a  curious 
revelation  of  how  mixed  the  population  was  growing — "  it 
would  be  better  if  the  citizens  served  with  one  another,  and 
did  not  have  ranked  with  them,  as  now,  Lydians  and  Phrygians 
and  Syrians  and  all  sorts  of  barbarians  ;  for  such  are  many  of 
the  metics  "  (2,  3).  "  Athens  above  all  cities  in  the  world  is 
that  which  in  the  nature  of  things  grows  by  peace  ;  if  she 
were  at  peace,  who  would  not  need  her,  beginning  with  ship- 
captains  and  merchants  ?  "  ^ — and  he  mentions  people  who 
are  well  supplied  with  grain,  wine,  sheep,  financiers,  craftsmen, 
sophists,  philosophers,  and  poets  (5,  2,  3).  And  this  brings 
us  back  to  the  boast  of  Isocrates  that  Athens  is  the  mistress 
who  has  taught  the  teachers  of  all  the  world,  till  "  Greek  " 
is  now  a  term  that  connotes  culture  as  much  as  race. 2  A  later 
age  was  to  see  almost  every  philosopher  of  note  leave  his 
native  place  and  make  Athens  his  home.  One  of  the  greatest 
of  them  came,  it  was  said,  in  charge  of  a  cargo  of  purple — the 
Phoenician  Cypriot  Zeno.^ 

A  community,  that  draws  to  itself  the  commerce  and  the 
culture  of  all  the  world,  will  soon  feel  special  needs  and  develop 
specialized  industries  and  professions  to  meet  them.  The 
one  that  at  present  most  concerns  us  is  banking.  The  bankers 
began  as  money-changers — an  expert  business  in  itself,  as  we 
can  realize,  when  we  remember  that  there  were  five  main 
standards  in  currency  among  the  Greek  states  and  endless 
local  varieties,  some,  as  we  have  seen,  unnegotiable  a  few 
miles  away  from  the  mints.*  Sparta  still  had  iron  "  spits  " — 
she  had  plenty  of  the  gold  once  forbidden  and  was  quite  eager 
for  more,  though  she  did  not  coin  it.  At  the  other  end  of  the 
scale  at  Bosporos,  where  gold  was  cheap  and  came  freely  from 
Colchis    and  Armenia,  gold  staters  were  struck  on  a  high 

1  On  the  other  hand,  Aristotle  [Pol.  vii.  6,  i,  1327a)  discusses  a 
question  of  old  standing :  Is  a  city  benefited  in  the  direction  of  good 
order  by  communication  with  the  sea,  by  a  crowd  of  merchants  coming 
and  going  ? 

2  Paneg.  43. 

3  Cf.  E.  Bevan,  Stoics  and  Sceptics,  p.  15.     Diogenes  Laertius,  vii. 
*  G.  F.  Hill,  Manual  of  Greek  and  Roman  Coins,  pp.  33-42. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  311 

standard.^  "  Many  cities,"  again,  as  Demosthenes  says, 
*'  use  money  quite  openly  debased  with  brass  and  lead ;"  ^ 
and  we  learn  that  the  tyrant  Dionysius,  like  Polycrates  before 
him,  and  like  Napoleon  after  him  with  forged  Russian  bank- 
notes, tried  this  discreditable  device.  ^  One  of  the  difficulties, 
with  which  Athens  had  to  cope  in  her  days  of  Empire,  was 
the  restriction  of  the  liberty  of  free  coinage  among  her  subjects. 
The  Persian  Empire,  as  we  have  seen,  had  its  own  currency ; 
the  daric  went  everywhere.  But  there  were  also  Persian 
varieties.  Pharnabazos,  we  learn,  about  this  time  was  issuing 
staters  with  a  fine  portrait  of  himself  and  his  name  in  Greek 
characters,  perhaps  from  the  mint  of  Cyzicos.*  This  city's 
own  gold  staters  were  one  of  the  best  known  and  most  widely 
accepted  currencies. 

The  money-changers  were  a  necessity,  and  their  tables 
stood  about  the  market — good  centres,  it  appears,  for  idlers 
and  other  students  of  human  nature.  Socrates  on  trial  will 
use,  he  says,  the  same  sort  of  language  "  which  I  have  been 
accustomed  to  speak  in  the  market  at  the  tables,  where  many 
of  you  have  heard  me."  ^  The  Man  of  Petty  Ambition,  who, 
according  to  Theophrastus,  ^  has  his  hair  cut  very  frequently 
and  keeps  his  teeth  white,  and  affects  other  forms  of  dandyism, 
frequents  the  tables  of  the  money-changers  in  the  market-place, 
and  buys  things  on  commission  for  friends  abroad — pickled 
olives  to  go  to  Byzantium,  and  Laconian  hounds  for  Cyzicos. 
By  and  by  the  money-changers  began  to  attract  to  themselves 
a  business  which  the  temples  had  so  far  had ' — they  began  to 
take  money  and  other  things  on  deposit ;  and  this  enabled 
them  to  pursue  money-lending  on  a  larger  scale  and  a  broader 
basis.  Banking  began  in  earnest,  with  all  the  apparatus  of 
elaborately  kept  books,  even  down  to  something  very  like 
letters  of  credit. ^     It  was  not  everybody  who  took  in  the  system 

1  G.  F.  Hill,  Manual,  p.  33.  ^  Demosthenes,  Timocr.  214. 

3  Aristotle,  Econ.  ii.  2,  20,  1349a;  Herodotus,  iii.  56;  and  G.  F. 
Hill,  Manual,  pp.  16,  17. 

*  See  Chapter  VII.  p.  222  ;  G.  F.  Hill,  p.  96. 

^  Plato,  Apol.  17c. 

'  Theophrastus,  Characters,  7. 

'  Xenophon  left  his  share  of  the  loot  of  the  Anabasis  in  the  temple 
of  Artemis  at  Ephesus  {Anab.  v.  3,  6). 

®  The  desire  to  avoid  shipping  of  money  (Isocrates,  Trapez.  ^6)^ 


312  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

at  a  flash ;  for,  when  Apollodorus  prosecuted  Timotheos, 
he  took  care  to  explain  to  the  court  how  it  was  that  he  could 
know  so  exactly  the  dates  and  details  of  the  transactions 
he  was  to  unfold  ;  how  bankers  keep  memoranda  of  the  sums 
they  pay  out  and  enter  such  items  as  for  what  this  or  that  is 
paid,  and  to  whom  and  on  whose  account,  so  that  they  may 
know  what  is  drawn  and  what  deposited  when  accounts  are 
made  up.^  The  explanation,  and  the  need  for  it,  are  interest- 
ing. Some  people  knew  all  about  it  quite  well — Theophrastus' 
Boastful  Man  will  stand  in  the  Deigma  (a  bazar  in  the  Peiraieus) 
talking  to  foreigners  of  the  great  sums  which  he  has  at  sea  ; 
he  will  discourse  of  the  vastness  of  his  money-lending  business 
and  the  extent  of  his  personal  gains  and  losses  ;  and,  while 
thus  drawing  the  long-bow,  will  send  his  boy  to  the  bank, 
where  he  has  a  drachma  to  his  credit. ^ 

II 

The  son  of  Sopaios  came  to  Athens,  as  we  have  seen,  with 
a  good  deal  of  money  and  two  cargoes  of  wheat.  It  was  the 
natural  thing  for  him  at  once  to  look  out  a  banker,  and  he  says 
that  Pythodorus,  the  son  of  Phoenix, ^  recommended  Pasion 
to  him,  "  so  I  used  his  bank."  The  bank  was  an  old-established 
one,  as  banks  went,  and  was  very  widely  known  throughout 
the  commercial  world.  It  was  in  the  Peiraieus,  as  one  would 
expect,  and  it  had  been  the  property  of  two  men,  Antisthenes 
and  Archestratos,  who  had  retired,  though  Archestratos 
still  lived  and  lent  his  successor  in  the  business  the  guarantee 
of  his  name,  as  we  shall  see.  The  successor  had  been,  as  very 
usually  was  the  case,  a  servant  of  the  bank — in  plain  words,  a 
slave — who  had  given  good  proof  that  he  was  honest  and 
capable.  "  And,"  adds  Demosthenes,*  "  in  the  commercial 
world  and  the  money  market,  that  a  man  should  have  a  reputa- 
tion for  business  faculties  and  should  at  the  same  time  be 
honest  is  considered  a  very  remarkable  thing."     Pasion  had, 

1  IPem.]  Timoth.  5.  ^  Theophrastus,  Characters,  6. 

2  Isocrates,  Trapez.  4.  Pythodorus  may  have  been  a  Phoenician 
and  not  the  son  of  Phoenix.  His  own  Greek  name  does  not  prove  him 
a  Greek.     xPl^^°^'-  i^  the  technical  term  for  being  a  cUent  of  a  bank. 

*  Demosthenes,  pro  Phorm.  44. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  313 

in  the  phrase  of  the  day,  presided  at  the  table  and  managed  * — 
he  had  been  chief  clerk,  slave  as  he  was.     For,  as  will  appear, 
a  banker  was  much  more  master  of  his  own  business  when  his 
employes  were  his  slaves.     If  litigation  arose,  the  Athenian 
laws  of  evidence,  with  their  markedly  different  treatment  of 
slave  and  free,  sometimes  left  a  loophole  for  a  speedy  manu- 
mission, which  might  save  the  bank-clerk  from  torture  and  his 
employer  from  loss,  while  for  business  purposes  their  relations 
would  be  very  little  changed.     A  good  business  man,  even  if 
he  were  a  slave,  was  a  valuable  and  important  person  ;  ^  and 
we  can  well  believe  that  even  before  Pasion  was  manumitted 
he  was  a  well-known   figure    in    commercial  circles,  whose 
features  and  whose  mind  would  be  familiar  to  merchants  and 
sea-captains  all  over  the  Greek  world.     What  is  more,  his 
knowledge  of  these  men  and  his  gift  for  divining  or  knowing 
their  characters  and  financial  stability  were  among  the  most 
valuable  assets  of  the  bank.     The  man  was  trusted  far  and 
wide,  at  once  for  his  judgment  and  his  honesty  ;  he  was  set  free 
in  due  course,  and  at  last  succeeded  his  masters  as  banker  him- 
self.    Politically  he  ranked  with  the  me  tics  as  a  resident  alien. 
So  to  Pasion  the  son  of  Sopaios  went  and  used  his  bank  ; 
and  his  transactions,  he  tells  us,  were  on  a  large  scale.     He 
managed  to  get  into  difficulties  with  the  state  in  the  matter  of 
a  merchant  vessel,  on  which  he  had  lent  a  good  deal  of  money  ; 
for  it  was  denounced  as  belonging  to  a  Delian,  and  therefore 
liable  to  confiscation  as  the  property  of  an  alien  enemy  in  a  time 
of  war.     He  was  foolish  enough  to  try  to  have  the  ship  launched 
and  away,  and  then  found  himself  in  imminent  risk  of  being 
put  to  death  without  trial.     An  old  friend  of  his  father's, 
whom  he  called  in,  refused  assistance  ;    but  Pasion  helped 
him  out  and  produced  Archestratos  to  be  his  surety  in  a  sum 
of  seven  talents.     From  the  fact  that  he  mentions  the  matter 
before  an  Athenian  court,  we  may  deduce  that  the  case  was 
settled  in  his  favour,  but  we  may  draw  other  inferences  from 
the  episode  than  those  he  wishes.^    Against  this  we  can  set  a 

^  [Dem.]  Steph.  A.  33,  KuO^fievov  ical  bioiKovvra  eyri  rfj  rpaTre^j]  ',  and 
Timoth.  iy,6  iiriKadrffiivos  irrl  rfj  Tpatri^rj  ]    and  Isocrates,  Trapez.  12. 

2  The  manager  of  the  elder  Demosthenes'  sword-factory  was  a 
freedman  (Demosthenes,  Aphobos,  A.  19). 

'  Isocrates,  Trapez.  42,  43  ;  Meier-Schomann,  Der  Attische  Process, 


314  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

small  service  rendered  by  him,  he  says,  to  Pasion.i  Eisphora 
was  required — the  special  war-tax  levied  on  property  and  paid 
by  citizen  and  metic  alike — and  epigrapheis,  who  seem  to 
have  been  assessment  commissioners,  not  exactly  state 
officials,  were  appointed.  The  son  of  Sopaios  says  he  was 
one  of  them,  and  interceded  with  his  colleagues  on  behalf 
of  Pasion.  The  occasion  must  have  been  when  Athens  in 
autumn  395,  though  still  without  walls,  made  her  bold  alliance 
with  Thebes  and  sent  her  contingent  to  Haliartos,  or  when  next 
year  she  sent  her  troops  to  take  part  in  the  unhappy  battle  of 
Corinth. 2  Both  episodes  are  mentioned  by  the  son  of  Sopaios 
to  prove  that  he  really  was  possessed  of  large  sums,^  and  was 
therefore  worth  robbing  ;  and  this  brings  us  at  once  to  his 
quarrel  with  Pasion.  What  follows  is  merely  the  Bosporan's 
narrative  as  set  out  for  him  by  Isocrates,  who  had  lost  all  his 
property  in  the  Peloponnesian  War  and  was  at  present  writing 
speeches  for  litigants.* 

He  begins  by  explaining  to  the  court  that  it  is  his  name  and 
credit  that  are  at  stake,  for,  great  as  the  sum  in  dispute  is,  he 
has  plenty  of  property  beside  it.  He  further  warns  the  court 
that  a  case  against  a  banker  is  always  a  difficult  one,  for  bank- 
ing transactions  are  made  without  witnesses,  and  the  great 
bankers  have  great  influence,  and  their  profession  seems  to 
guarantee  their  honesty.  Then  he  sets  about  telling  his  tale, 
and  explains  how  he  came  from  the  Pontus  and  began  to  deal 
with  Pasion,  Some  time  later,  he  continues,  there  was  a 
difficulty  with  Satyros  ;  Sopaios  was  denounced  to  him  as 
plotting  a  revolution,  and  his  son  in  Athens  as  consorting  with 
Bosporan  exiles,  who  in  the  nature  of  things  were  available 
for  any  conspiracy  of  the  kind.  Satyros  at  once  arrested 
Sopaios,  and  sent  word  to  his  subjects  resident  in  Athens  to 
seize  what  property  the  son  of  Sopaios  might  have  and  send 
himself  home  at  once  a  prisoner. — We  may  remark  that  the 
sending  of  such  orders  to  Athens  shows  how  secure  Satyros 
felt  his  relations  with  the  Athenians  to  be. — The  son  of  Sopaios 
in  this  moment  of  difficulty  turned  to  his  banker,  in  whom  he 

p.  298.  The  independence  of  Delos  at  this  time  is  confirmed  by  an 
inscription  of  403  (see  Hicks  and  Hill,  Greek  Hist.  Inscr.,  No.  83). 

^  Isocrates,  Trapez.  41.     ^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  5,  16  ;   iv.  2,  10-23. 

*  Isocrates,  Trapez.  41.  *  Isocrates,  15,  Antidosis,  161. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  315 

had  implicit  trust ;  and  they  devised  a  plan.  Such  property 
as  was  too  conspicuous  to  be  concealed,  was  handed  over  to 
the  agents  of  Satyros,  while  the  Bosporan  denied  that  anything 
stood  to  his  credit  in  Pasion's  books,  and  alleged  that,  on  the 
contrary,  he  owed  money  to  Pasion  and  to  others.  The  device 
worked  well  enough  with  the  prince's  agents  ;  but  by  and  by, 
when  the  young  man  proposed  to  get  away  to  Byzantium, — 
a  town  outside  the  range  of  Athens  or  Satyros,  and  under  the 
government  of  a  Spartan  harmost,  and  therefore  a  safe  place 
for  him  and  not  so  very  far,  in  case  of  need,  from  home, — 
Pasion,  on  being  asked  to  hand  over  the  money,  denied  point- 
blank  that  there  was  any  deposit  at  all.  For  the  banker 
knew  that  the  Bosporan' s  denial  had  been  heard  by  many,  and 
he  expected  that,  if  the  young  man  lingered  in  Athens,  his 
surrender  to  Satyros'  people  was  certain  ;  if  he  returned  to 
Pontus,  that  meant  death  as  certainly  ;  and  if  he  chose  to  go 
anywhere  else — let  him  go  ;  Pasion  was  rid  of  him,  and  kept  the 
money.  The  young  man  reflected  that,  if  he  denounced 
Pasion  openly  and  proclaimed  the  deal  they  had  made,  he 
would  only  involve  himself  and  his  family  the  more,  and  he 
would  not  be  any  nearer  the  recovery  of  his  own. 

Then  the  situation  was  suddenly  and  startlingly  reversed. 
News  came  that  Satyros  had  been  satisfied,  and,  in  token  of 
his  reconciliation,  had  advanced  Sopaios  to  more  important 
duties  and  had  taken  his  daughter  to  be  wife  to  his  own  son. 
(One  can  only  wonder  whether  this  son  was  Leucon,  who  suc- 
ceeded his  father  the  next  year.)  Pasion  saw  what  would 
follow,  and  promptly  "  vanished  "  his  slave  bank-manager, 
Kittos,  who  knew  too  much  about  the  transaction.  The 
Bosporan  and  his  friend  Menexenos  came  to  the  bank,  and, 
as  Pasion  expected,  demanded  the  surrender  of  Kittos  for 
examination  :  and  he  was  ready  for  them.  He  alleged  that 
the  pair  of  them  had  corrupted  Kittos,  obtained  six  talents  out 
of  the  bank  through  him,  and  then  "  vanished  "  him  them- 
selves ;  and  he  had  them  off,  there  and  then,  "  grumbling 
and  weeping  "  as  he  went,  to  the  polemarch  to  give  sureties 
for  those  six  talents.  The  Bosporan  went  away  to  the  Pelo- 
ponnese  to  look  for  Kittos,  but  meanwhile  Menexenos  found 
him  in  Athens  ;  and  then  fresh  shuffles  began.  Pasion  first 
declared  Kittos  was  a  free  man  ;  and  then  he  changed  tune 


3i6  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  offered  him  for  torture.  "  So  we  chose  our  torturers  and 
met  him  in  the  temple  of  Poseidon  ;  ^  and  I  demanded  that 
they  should  flog  Kittos  and  twist  him  till  he  seemed  to  them 
to  be  telling  the  truth."  At  that  Pasion  changed  again,  and 
there  were  arguments.  The  torturers  joined  in  the  discussion, 
and  refused  at  last  under  the  circumstances  to  torture  Kittos 
(which  was  prudent,  if  his  status  was  doubtful),  but  they  recog- 
nized that  Pasion  had  handed  him  over.  Pasion  now  began  to 
edge  towards  paying  the  money.  A  meeting  in  another  temple 
followed, — with  tears  and  entreaties  on  Pasion's  part, — an 
arrangement,  another  meeting,  and  an  agreement,  which 
was  put  in  writing  and  the  document  given  to  a  Pheraean, 
Tyro.  Meanwhile  Menexenos  brought  a  case  against  Pasion, 
and  began  to  demand  Kittos  on  his  own  account  ;  and  Pasion 
came  to  the  Bosporan  in  a  very  humble  strain  to  get  that 
matter  settled.  Then  he  suddenly  regained  his  old  confidence, 
and  it  proved  that  he  had  bribed  Tyro's  slaves  and  secured 
the  agreement,  and  substituted  for  it  a  full  discharge  given 
to  him  in  writing  by  the  son  of  Sopaios.  After  that  the  matter 
came  before  Satyros,  who  heard  both  stories,  Kittos  appearing 
for  Pasion  in  the  character  of  a  free  man  and  a  citizen  of 
Miletus.  Satyros  would  pronounce  no  decision,  for  he  saw 
Pasion  would  pay  no  attention  to  it  in  Athens,  but  he  recog- 
nized that  injustice  had  been  done,  charged  the  ship-captains 
to  help  the  son  of  Sopaios,  and  himself  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
Athenian  state,  which,  however,  has  not  come  down  to  us. 
This  is  the  plaintiff's  case. 

What  the  defence  was,  and  what  the  verdict,  we  do  not 
know.  It  looks  as  if  the  plaintiff  had  learnt  at  the  anacrisis,  or 
preliminary  hearing,  that  Pasion  would  urge  that  the  whole 
thing  was  a  trumped-up  affair  and  that  the  plaintiff  was  not 
a  person  of  substance  at  all.  At  least,  the  repeated  insistence 
on  his  means  suggests  so  much.  But  we  have  not  Pasion's 
side  of  the  story  ;  and  stories  told  to  Greek  law  courts  vary 
wonderfully  as  one  hears  them  from  one  side  and  the  other. 
Nor  can  we  guess  the  verdict.  Leucon  succeeded  Satyros 
next  year,  and,  even  if  he  married  the  daughter  of  Sopaios,  it 
did  not  interfere  with  his  maintaining  the  friendliest  relations 

1  The  scene  and  the  purpose  and  the  personnel  of  the  meeting 
strike  a  modern  rather  oddly. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  317 

with  Athens  through  a  long  reign. ^  Still  we  can  deduce 
nothing  from  the  hypothetical  indignation  of  a  prince  over 
the  wrongs  of  a  possible  brother-in-law,  whom  in  any  case  he 
had  never  chosen.  On  the  other  hand,  Pasion  for  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century  lived  and  managed  his  bank  in  the 
Peiraieus  with  credit  and  success.  He  had  among  his  clients 
some  of  the  first  names  of  Athens,  and  if  the  speech  of 
Isocrates  had  not  survived  no  one  would  ever  have  guessed 
that  such  scandals  could  possibly  have  been  alleged 
against  the  head  of  the  banking  profession.  We  can  conjec- 
ture nothing  from  the  survival  of  the  speech  ;  it  is  hard 
enough  to  guess  why  many  extant  speeches  should  have 
survived  at  all,  or  who  could  have  wished  to  keep  or  tran- 
scribe them.  Isocrates,  it  is  true,  set  a  value  on  his  speeches, 
but  he  is  emphatic  in  his  preference  for  themes  of  national 
interest. 

There  were  in  Athens  and  elsewhere  bankers  who  failed  and 
went  bankrupt,  to  the  indignation  of  the  public. ^  But  Pasion 
prospered  and  won  the  goodwill  of  the  Athenians.  As  he  was 
a  metic,  he  could  not  invest  his  gains  in  land  until  he  was 
made  an  isoteles  ;  so  he  started  a  shield-factory,  which  throve, 
as  we  shall  see.  It  is  interesting  to  find  a  decade  or  so  earlier 
another  shield-factory  in  the  Peiraieus  owned  by  another 
famous  family  of  metics — the  household  of  Cephalos,  the 
friend  of  Socrates,  and  father  of  the  orator  Lysias — ^who  under 
the  Thirty  lost  700  shields  and  120  slaves,  and  were  ruined.^ 
Pasion's  reflections  on  the  fact  that  he,  once  sold  and  bought  as 
a  slave,  was  now  owner  of  perhaps  a  hundred  fellow  human 
beings,  might  have  been  curious,  if  he  reflected  at  all.  The 
father  of  Demosthenes  (one  of  Pasion's  clients  at  the  bank, 
though  he  prudently  dealt  with  two  banks)  owned  a  sword- 
factory,  where  very  fine  swords  were  made  with  ivory  handles,* 
the  sort  of  thing  that  Alcaeus'  brother  two  hundred  years  before 

1  See  Demosthenes,  Lept.  29  ff.,  especially  §  32,  where  he  says 
Athens  annually  has  from  Leucon  400,000  medimnoi  of  wheat 
{med'imnos=  i-|-  bushels). 

2  [Dem.]  Timoth.  68.  Various  names  of  bankrupt  bankers  survive ; 
cf.  pro  Phorm.  50,  51  ;  Steph.  A.  63,  64  ;  Apatur.  9,  Heracleides  who 
absconded  and  hid. 

3  Lysias,  c.  Eratosth.  17-19. 

*  Demosthenes,  Aphobus,  A.  lo,  20,  30,  31. 


3i8  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

had  brought  from  the  far  East.i  Aristophanes  held  that  the 
influence  of  these  makers  of  warlike  implements,  like  that  of 
the  manufacturers  of  armour  plate  and  gunpowder  in  modern 
times,  was  used  against  peace  ;  and  he  curses  them — may  the 
shield-dealer  be  caught  by  pirates  and  made  to  eat  raw  barley.  2 
Whatever  Pasion's  own  views,  he  knew  and  met  the  opinions 
of  the  Demos.  "  My  father,"  says  his  son,  "  gave  you  a 
thousand  shields  ;  he  was  serviceable  to  you  in  many  ways, 
and  of  his  own  accord  he  volunteered  to  give  you  and  did 
give  you  five  triremes,  and  himself  supplied  them  with  crews, 
and  was  trierarch  too."  So  successful  and  prosperous  every 
way  was  this  former  slave  turned  banker.  ^  Plato  has  a 
savage  word  for  this  type  of  man — "  a  shabby  fellow,  who 
saves  something  out  of  everything  and  piles  up  a  treasure- 
hoard  {67)(xavpoiToi,o<i  avrjp)  ;  and  the  mass  of  men  positively 
praise  them  for  it."  * 

Pasion  had  his  reward,  for  "  the  Demos  of  the  Athenians 
voted  that  Pasion  be  an  Athenian,  and  his  descendants  also, 
for  the  good  services  he  has  done  the  city,"  ^  "for  his  good 
manhood  shown  to  the  Demos."  ^  His  son  not  unreasonably 
magnifies  the  gift.  There  were  others  who  thought  the 
Athenians  far  too  apt  to  give  it  away  to  anybody  and  every- 
body. Theramenes  spoke  of  democrats  who  thought  there 
would  never  be  a  fine  democracy  till  they  had  made  citizens 
of  every  slave  in  the  place  and  every  beggar  that  from  very 
poverty  would  sell  the  city  for  a  shilling.'  We  have  seen 
how  Archinos  blocked  the  generous  proposal  of  Thrasybulus 
to  enfranchise  all  loyal  metics.^  Isocrates,  fifty  years  later, 
laments  the  ease  with  which  the  citizenship  was  given. ^ 
"  We  plume  ourselves  and  think  much,"  he  says,  "  of  our 
being  better  born  than  other  men,  yet  we  are  more  ready  to 
share  this  nobility  of  ours  with  anyone  who  likes  than  the 
Triballians  and  Lucanians  their  lowly  birth."  In  wars 
and  in  other  ways  the  famous  and  great  houses  of  old  have 
become  extinct,  and  the  phratries  and  rolls  are  full  of  people 

1  See  Chapter  II.  p.  40.  ^  Aristophanes,  Peace,  447. 

3  Steph.  A.  85.  *  Plato,  Rep.  viii.  554A. 

^  c.  Neaeram,  2  ;  c.  Nicostr.  18.  '  c.  Neaeram,  89. 

'  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  3,  48.  ^  'Adrjvaiav  IloXiTeia,  40. 
»  De  Pace  (355  B.C.),  50,  88,  89. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  319 

who  have  no  connexion  with  the  city.  "  Yet  we  should 
count  happy,  not  the  city  that  Hghtly  herds  together  a  mass 
of  citizens  from  all  mankind,  but  that  which  guards  more 
than  any  other  the  race  of  them  who  founded  her  in  the 
beginning."  Yet  he  too  would  wish  (it  appears  from  the 
same  pamphlet)  to  see  the  city  full  of  merchants  and  foreigners 
and  metics.  Pasion,  no  doubt,  had  meant  all  along  to  achieve 
the  citizenship  and  was  glad  to  have  it.  It  was  of  value  to  a 
banker  in  various  ways.  His  business  involved  a  good  deal 
of  risk,  and  it  was  well  to  have  friends — especially  to  have 
the  state  as  a  friend. 

One  thing  that  strikes  a  modern  reader  of  the  speeches 
that  survive  of  those  delivered  in  commercial  cases  is  the 
high  rates  of  interest.  A  dowry  is  owed  at  the  rate  of  10  per 
cent  per  annum,^  or  even  18  per  cent.^  ApoUodorus  mortgages 
a  lodging-house  at  16  per  cent.^  Chrysippos  lends  a  man 
2000  drachmas  on  a  voyage  to  Bosporos  and  back  at  30  per 
cent ;  *  but  here  we  touch  the  sea  and  the  risks  to  ships  sailing 
without  chart  or  compass  over  unlighted  waters,  with  the 
constant  dangers  of  piracy  and  war.  The  understanding  in 
such  cases  was  that  if  the  ship  went  down,  the  loan  was  lost. 
In  the  speech  against  Zenothemis  we  have  a  story  of  an 
attempt  to  scuttle  the  ship  to  be  rid  of  the  liability,  while 
the  borrowed  money  was  safe  in  another  direction,  and  the 
goods,  on  which  it  had  been  borrowed,  had  never  been  in  the 
ship  at  all.  International  loans  were  not  yet  invented  ;  few 
people  would  have  taken  the  risk — governments  ^  were  too 
rmstable,  and  to  raise  a  tax  to  pay  interest  to  a  foreigner  in 
another  city  would  have  been  to  invite  trouble.  Where 
state  and  municipality  tended  to  coincide,  municipal  loans 
did  not  occur.  When  Athens  wanted  a  war-tax  in  a  special 
hurry,  she  raised  it  by  proeisphora — by  making  the  richest 

^  Demosthenes,  30,  Onetor.  A.  7. 

2  Demosthenes,  27,  Aphobus,  A.  17.  I  am  told  that  in  the  East 
generally  interest  is  much  higher  to  this  day  than  anything  great 
commercial  countries  are  accustomed  to.  It  depends  entirely  on 
available  surplus.  Ten  per  cent  for  money  is  quite  common  in 
Russia  now. 

3  [Dem.]  53,  Nicostr.  13.  *  [Dem.]  c.  Phorm.  23. 

^  Not  ''  governments  "  in  the  modern  sense  of  "  ministries,"  of 
course. 


320  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

men  in  the  various  demes  pay  eisphora  for  the  whole  deme, 
and  permitting  them,  indeed  assisting  them  (if  they 
preferred  unpopularity),  to  recover  from  their  neighbours. 
A  banker  might,  indeed,  have  foreign  business  of  a 
semi-political  sort,  as  when  Phormion's  ships  were  held  up 
and  Stephanos  was  sent  off  to  Byzantium,  to  negotiate  for 
them. 

Pasion  numbered  among  his  clients  some  of  the  best 
known  people  in  Athens — the  financier-statesman  Agyrrhios, 
apparently,  before  he  reached  the  top  of  his  fame  ;  Callistratus, 
conspicuous  at  home  and  in  exile  ;  and  (for  our  purposes  the 
most  interesting  of  them)  Timotheos  the  general,  the  son  of 
the  more  famous  Conon.  Timotheos,  like  some  other  great 
adventurers,  lived  a  life  that  was  almost  as  courageous  and 
various  in  its  finances  as  it  was  in  war  and  politics  ;  and 
Pasion  stood  by  him  again  and  again.  For  instance,  in  374, 
Timotheos  was  on  the  very  verge  of  setting  sail  with  a  fleet 
from  the  Peiraieus,  and  found  himself  in  want  of  money. 
In  a  hurry  he  came  to  Pasion  and  begged  a  loan  of  135 1 
drachmas,  2  obols — and  would  Pasion  please  pay  it  to  his 
agent  Antimachos.  Antimachos  sent  his  clerk  Autonomos 
for  the  money  ;  and  Phormion,  the  manager,  paid  it,  making 
a  careful  note  of  the  date,  the  names,  and  the  whole  trans- 
action. Next  year  the  situation  was  desperate.  Timotheos 
was  deposed  from  his  command,  and  was  on  trial,  with 
Antimachos  (who  was  actually  put  to  death)  ;  his  property 
was  all  mortgaged,  and  he  had  borrowed  from  a  man  1000 
drachmas  to  pay  debts  to  a  number  of  Boeotian  trierarchs 
whose  evidence  he  wanted  at  the  trial — and  so  on  ;  and  to 
Pasion  he  came  again  for  money  to  settle  with  this  creditor. 
Two  great  foreigners  came  to  plead  for  him  at  his  trial,  one 
being  Jason,  prince  or  dynast  of  Pherae,  a  very  great  figure 
in  the  history  of  this  period  ;  and  they  had  to  be  entertained. 
A  hundred  drachmas  were  needed  for  this,  which  he  had  from 
the  bank,  along  with  some  tapestry  (which  was  duly  returned) 
and  two  silver  bowls  (never  returned,  though  they  belonged 
to  another  client  of  the  bank,  to  whom  237  drachmas  had  to 
be  paid  in  lieu  of  them).^    Timotheos  was  acquitted,  but  he 

^  Theophrastus  {Characters,  18)  says  that  the  suspicious  man,  when 
he  lends  a  cup,  prefers  to  have  a  surety  for  its  return. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  321 

was  still  in  such  difficulties  that  the  old  Pasion  did  not  press 
him,  but  next  year  advanced  a  further  1750  drachmas  to 
discharge  the  freight  of  a  cargo  of  logs  from  King  Amyntas 
of  Macedonia,  which  Timotheos  used,  when  he  got  home  again, 
to  build  his  house, — he  had  already  a  fine  one  with  a  tower 
of  which  Aristophanes  made  fun.^  He  was  an  expensive 
and  sumptuous  person,  and  there  is  an  anecdote  that,  dining 
with  Plato  one  day,  he  gracefully  indicated  to  his  host  that 
in  preparing  the  menu  he  had  chiefly  thought  of  the  morrow.  ^ 
The  aged  Isocrates  twenty  years  later  told  how  this  high- 
mindedness,  suitable  as  it  might  be  for  a  general,  told  against 
his  popularity,  and  how  he  himself  had  urged  Timotheos  to 
adopt  a  more  gracious  and  conciliatory  manner — "  and  he 
said  I  was  right,  but  he  could  not  change  his  nature.  Still 
he  was  a  gentleman  indeed,  and  worthy  of  the  city  and  of 
Greece."  ^ 

At  the  time  of  the  last  loan  to  Timotheos,  Pasion  was 
beginning  to  feel  his  age — "  he  found  a  difficulty  in  walking 
up  to  Athens,  and  his  eye  was  betraying  him."  (It  is  such 
passages  that  bring  home  to  a  modem  reader  how  few  of  our 
ordinary  conveniences  of  life  the  ancients  had— when  Socrates 
went  down  to  the  Peiraieus,  or  Pasion  up  to  the  city,  it  was 
on  foot.*)  He  fell  ill,  and  he  transferred  the  bank  and  the 
shield-factory  to  his  freedman  ^  Phormion  on  a  lease — the 
rent  to  be  two  talents  forty  minae  per  annum,  the  factory 
yielding  a  talent  and  the  bank  the  rest.  Phormion,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  already  manager  of  the  bank,  and,  it  appears, 
was  as  good  a  servant  to  Pasion  as  Pasion  had  been  to  his 
owners  thirty  years  before.  Phormion  was,  of  course,  a  me  tic. 
Among  the  Uabilities  of  the  bank  were  sums  amounting  to 
eleven  talents  which  had  been  lent  out  on  real  estate,  on 
which  Phormion  as  a^foreigner  would  not  be  able  to  distrain. 
This  amount  of  mortgages,  it  appears,  Pasion  took  over 
himself,  and  was  entered  as  owing  the  total  eleven  talents 

^  Plutus,  180;   Athenaeus,  xii.  548A ;   Timoth.  ^6. 

^  Athenaeus,  x.  419.  ^  isocrates,  Antid.  129-138. 

*  Diogenes  Laertius,  vi,  2,  says  that  Antisthenes,  the  Cynic,  Uved 
in  the  Peiraieus  and  "  every  day  walked  up  the  forty  stades  to  hear 
Socrates  " — about  five  mUes. 

"  Phorm.  4,  jjbr]  Ka6'  iavrov  ovri — his  own  master. 
21 


322  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

to  the  bank.  From  now  on  his  health  declined.  The  Greeks 
thought  meanly  of  trades  that  kept  a  man  sitting,  and  indoors 
all  the  day  ;  "  they  effeminate  the  body,  and  make  the  soul 
much  weaker  still."  ^  Business,  it  seems  generally  agreed, 
does  not  let  a  man  have  much  exercise  ;  but  Pasion's  faculties 
remained  pretty  clear,  though  it  suited  his  son  later  on  to 
say  that  he  lost  them.  He  was  able,  however,  to  give  a  fair 
account  of  the  moneys  owing  to  him — as  Timotheos  was  to 
find.  2     In  the  year  370  Pasion  died. 

The  Athenians  took  a  good  deal  of  interest  in  the  estates 
and  wills  of  their  fellow-citizens,  but,  as  Lysias  says,^  "  you 
have  often  been  mistaken  as  to  men's  property.  .  .  .  For 
instance,  there  was  Ischomachus  ;  while  he  lived,  everybody, 
so  I  hear,  supposed  he  would  have  more  than  seventy  talents  ; 
but  when  he  died  his  two  sons  did  not  get  as  much  as  ten 
talents  each  "  ;  and  so  on  through  a  gossiping  list,  which 
may  be  of  more  value  to  the  modern  reader  than  to  the  orator's 
contemporaries.  For  one  thing,  it  serves  to  emphasize  the 
shifting  of  wealth  from  the  great  families  of  the  fifth  century  to 
new  ones.  Nicias  and  Callias  had  been  supposed  to  be  worth 
a  hundred  and  two  hundred  talents,  but  their  descendants  were 
possessed  of  scarcely  a  year's  interest  on  such  sums.  After  all 
this,  it  is  remarkable  to  find  that  the  ex-slave  Pasion  actually 
did  leave  seventy  talents,  which  his  children  and  his  wife 
inherited.  By  way  of  comparison  we  may  recall  that  the 
father  of  Demosthenes  left  quite  a  comfortable  fortune  of 
fourteen  talents,  and  One  tor  thirty.  *  Pasion's  will  has  features 
which  strike  us  strangely,  but  in  reality  it  was  drawn  up  on  quite 
conventional  lines.  ^  The  law  of  Solon  secured  equality  of 
treatment  for  all  acknowledged  legitimate  sons ;  ^  and  here 
there  were  two,  ApoUodorus  aged  twenty-four  and  probably 
already  married,  and  Pasicles  aged  ten.    The  elder  had  the 

1  Xen.  Oecon.  4,  2.  ^  Timoth.  42.  '  Lysias,  xix.  46-52. 

*  Demosthenes,  Aphobus,  A,  5  ;  Onetor.  A.  10. 

^  For  a  delightful  parody  of  the  laws  of  inheritance  see  Aristophanes, 
Birds,  1641,  on  the  prospects  of  Herakles  in  case  of  Zeus'  death — very 
slight,  for  as  he  has  not  been  enrolled  among  the  phratores,  uncle 
Poseidon  will  succeed,  and  Athena  will  be  the  errUXrjpos.  Solon's  law 
is  cited. 

« The  crucial  case  is  that  of  Mantias  and  Plango's  false  oath 
(Demosthenes,  xxxix.  6  ;  xl.  48). 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  323 

eldest  son's  complimentary  portion — a  lodging-house  in  this 
case.  The  lease  of  bank  and  factory  was  to  continue  in  Phor- 
mion's  hands  till  Pasicles  came  of  age  (at  eighteen)  ;  Phormion 
was  to  be  one  of  his  guardians  and  was  not  to  start  a  bank 
on  his  own  account  without  leave  of  the  two  brothers.  The 
widow  Archippe,  with  a  dowry  of  three  talents  forty  minae, 
was  to  marry  Phormion. ^ 

The  last  clause  annoyed  Apollodorus  exceedingly,  both  at 
the  time  and  afterwards.  But  Demosthenes  has  no  difficulty 
in  showing  that  itwas  a  thing  very  usually  done  among  bankers.^ 
Bankers  were  not  yet  gentlemen — they  were  mostly  manu- 
mitted slaves,  and  after  all  one  was  as  good  as  another — and 
the  arrangement  was  generally  a  satisfactory  one.  It  secured 
the  manager  of  the  concern  for  the  family,  and  in  this  case  the 
manager  was  a  man  of  proved  capacity.  ^  What  the  widow 
thought,  no  one  seems  to  have  inquired,  but  the  feelings  of 
widows,  heiresses,  and  girls  generally  were  not  much  consulted 
in  Athens  as  to  such  matters  as  marriage.  It  says  a  great  deal 
that  the  marriage  of  an  heiress  might  be  settled  by  a  legal 
action  between  two  competitive  kinsmen, 

III 

So  Pasion  was  gone,  and  the  destinies  of  his  house,  his 
bank,  his  factory,  and  his  fortune  generally  were  committed 
to  Phormion. 

Phormion' s  advent  to  the  family  is  described  with  savage 
particularity  by  Apollodorus.  Pasion  bought  him  in  the 
regular  way  at  the  regular  place,  the  Anakeion  or  temple  of  the 
Heavenly  Twins.  He  might  just  as  well  have  been  bought 
by  a  cook  or  anybody  else,  in  which  case  he  would  have  been 
taught  the  cookery  trade  or  whatever  trade  it  might  have 
been  ;  and  he  never  would  have  become  a  great  banker  at  all. 
When  he  was  brought  home,  Archippe  (this  is  just  an  amiable 

1  These  details  are  collected  from  Phovm.  8-10,  34  ;   Steph.  A.  28,  32. 

^Beloch,  Att.  Pol.  29,  compares  the  passing  of  Aspasia  to  Lysicles 
on  the  death  of  Pericles. 

3  Demosthenes,  2,6,  Phorm.  30.  Demosthenes'  own  father  left  his 
widow  by  will  to  the  guardian,  who  took  the  dowry  but  did  not  marry 
the  lady  (Demosthenes,  27,  Aphobus,  A.  5). 


324  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

conjecture  by  her  son)  showered  the  figs  and  cakelets  over  his 
head  as  he  stood  by  the  hearth — a  curious  little  ceremony  of 
welcome  for  the  newly  bought,  more  welcome  perhaps  to  his 
feUow-slaves  who  scrambled  for  the  sweetmeats  than  to  him- 
self.i  Phormion  was  a  barbarian,  as  ApoUodorus  takes  pains 
to  emphasize — apparently  not  a  Syrian,  but  of  what  race  we 
are  not  told.^  Pasion  made  a  Greek  of  him,  and  taught  him 
letters  and  a  banker's  business,^  but  he  was  never  able  to  give 
him  a  good  Greek  accent  * — any  more  than  he  was  able  to 
give  his  own  son  good  business  qualities  or  a  good  character, 
as  Demosthenes  suggests.  ^ 

Archippe  is  to  us  a  dim  figure.  Nobody  knows  how  Pasion 
came  by  her.  A  careless  phrase  of  the  scholar  Libanios  (about 
380  A.D.)  suggests  that  she  may  have  been  his  mate  in  his  days 
of  slavery,  but  this  is  only  a  guess,  and  at  best  it  is  perhaps 
open  to  doubt  on  physiological  grounds,  as  there  were  twenty 
six  or  seven  years  between  the  births  of  ApoUodorus  and  her 
youngest  child,  and  Pasion  was  already  a  free  man,  a  metic,  and 
a  banker  of  high  repute  when  ApoUodorus  was  bom.  To  suit 
his  own  purposes,  ApoUodorus  tried  some  years  after  her  death 
to  make  out  that  she  was  an  heiress,  which  she  certainly  was 
not  in  the  Athenian  sense  of  the  word.  No  relatives  of  hers  are 
alluded  to  in  any  of  the  speeches,*  and  aU  that  she  inherited 
was  the  gift  of  her  first  husband.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
she  was  an  Athenian  citizen  at  any  stage.  Pasion  was  made 
one,  and  his  sons  by  her  were  included  in  the  decree  of  the 
people,  but  this  hardly  covered  Archippe,  for  in  that  case  she 
surely  could  not  have  been  bequeathed  to  Phormion. 

Phormion  let  a  year  or  two  pass,  and  then  in  368,  when 
x\pollodorus  was  away  with  the  Athenian  fleet  as  trierarch,  he 
married  Archippe.  What  followed  the  return  of  ApoUodorus, 
he  shall  tell  us  himself.  "  When  I  sailed  home  and  realized 
it  and  saw  what  was  done,  I  was  highly  annoyed  and  took  it 

1  [Dem.]  45,  Staph.  A.  91  ;  cf.  Aristophanes,  Plutus,  768  (and  the 
scholiast's  note)  and  798. 

2  Steph.  A.  30,  73,  81,  86.  »  Steph.  A.  72,  7^. 

*  Steph.  A.  30 ;  cf .  Phorm.  i .  Derision  of  some  one's  pronunciation, 
Plato  Comicus,  Frag.  168  (Kock),  7  (Pickard- Cambridge)  ;  he  failed  to 
talk  Attic,  and  would  say  oXiov  for  6\iyov,  like  many  copyists  of  MSS. 
in  later  days. 

^  Phorm.  44.     '  ApoUodorus  expressly  says  she  had  none  {Steph.  B.  19) . 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  325 

very  much  amiss.  I  could  not  bring  a  private  suit  against 
him — there  were  no  trials  of  private  causes  at  that  time,  you 
had  adjourned  them  all  because  of  the  war  [with  Thebes] ;  so 
I  entered  with  the  thesmothetai  a  graphe  hybreos  against  him 
[i.e.  made  a  criminal  instead  of  a  civil  charge  of  it,  though  the 
grounds  are  obviously  very  vague].  But  as  time  elapsed,  and 
the  case  was  put  off  several  times,  as  the  courts  were  not  sitting, 
my  mother  had  children  by  him.  And  after  that  (for  the 
whole  truth  shall  be  told  you,  gentlemen)  there  were  manj^ 
kindly  overtures  from  my  mother,  as  well  as  entreaties  from 
Phormion  here — a  great  deal  of  talk,  very  moderate  and  very 
humble.  But  to  make  a  long  story  short,"  he  abruptly  skips 
perhaps  eighteen  years  and  reaches  the  present  time.  ApoUo- 
dorus  is  a  clumsy  speaker,  who  handles  grammar  awkwardly, 
lets  his  sentences  straggle,  and  repeats  himself  ;  but  his  public 
career  had  taught  him  it  was  well  to  avoid  the  weak  points  of 
a  case,  and  there  were  a  good  many  weak  points  in  his  quarrel 
with  Phormion. 

The  character  of  Apollodorus  stands  out  very  clearly. 
Demosthenes  speaks  of  his  "  shouting  and  shamelessness  "  ^ — 
which  is  an  opponent's  harsh  way  of  describing  personal  defects 
admitted  and  lamented — "  For  my  part,  men  of  Athens,  what 
with  the  nature  of  my  countenance,  and  my  quick  walk  and 
loud  voice,  I  do  not  count  myself  among  those  who  are  lucky 
in  their  physical  endowment.  These  things  do  me  no  good, 
and  they  annoy  people,  and  injure  me."  2  The  Athenians  dis- 
liked a  quick  walk — it  was,  according  to  one  of  their  poets, 
the  mark  of  a  vulgar  mind  to  walk  unrhythmically  in  the 
street,  3  and  Aristotle  himself  says  that  the  high-minded  man 
moves  slowly  and  has  a  deep  voice  * — there  is  nothing  shrill  or 
excited  about  him.  (All  the  same,  Phormion  need  not  sneak 
about  the  streets  as  he  does,  hugging  the  wall,  with  a  sour  look 
on  his  face — it  does  not  prove  him  modest — only  a  hater  of 
men.  5)    Apollodorus  swaggered  round  in  a  chlamys  (a  woollen 

1  Phorm.  61.  ^  Steph.  A.  77. 

^  Alexis,  ap.  Athen.  i.  21,  ev  yap  vo/iifw  tovto  rav  dvekevdepoiv  eivai,  to 
^abiC^iv  dppvdfxcos  iv  rais  obols. 

*  Aristotle,  Ethics,  iv.  8,  34,  p.  ii25«. 

«  Steph.  A.  68.  Cf.  Plato's  picture,  drawn  quite  independently 
{Rep.  viii.  55Se).    "  The  men  of  business,  stooping  as  they  walk,  and 


326  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

cloak — the  sort  of  luxury  affected  by  Alcibiades  and  Meidias  ^), 
with  three  attendants  at  his  heels  ^ — even  passers-by  could 
read  dissipation  in  his  face.^  He  was  a  spendthrift  and  a 
braggart,  who,  so  his  enemies  maintained,  wasted  his  money 
on  hetairai  and  extravagance  and  gold  paint,  while  he  talked 
loud  of  his  services  to  the  state.  The  last  touch  was  true — 
Apollodorus  is  quite  definite  about  his  liturgies,  his  trierarchies 
and  eisphora,  and  the  magnificent  outfit  of  the  trireme  com- 
mitted to  him,  and  its  seaworthiness  and  efficiency  ;  *  but  he 
thought  he  was  "  moderate  in  all  his  personal  expenses."  ^ 
On  this  point  one  curious  detail  may  be  noted  which  suggests 
that  he  was  not  Pasion's  son  for  nothing  ;  he  kept  accounts, 
and  did  it  with  great  method  and  particularity,  giving  date  and 
place  and  currency  and  rate  of  exchange.  ^ 

He  married  the  daughter  of  a  man  called  Deinias,  and  we 
gradually  pick  up  some  acquaintance  with  his  wife's  relatives. 
The  last  we  see  of  him  is  in  a  lawsuit,  in  which  he  and  his 
brother-in-law  are  engaged  in  indicting  an  enemy  for  an  out- 
rage on  propriety  and  religion.'  His  wife's  cousin,  Stephanos, 
was  so  unnatural  as  to  side  with  Phormion  in  the  great  suit,  and 
was  therefore  capable  of  every  iniquity.  In  his  early  married 
life  Apollodorus  lived  in  the  country, ^  but  he  had  no  luck  in 
his  neighbours,  whom  he  befriended — even  ransoming  one  from 
pirates,  though  he  had  to  mortgage  his  lodging-house  to  do 
it.^  All  the  reward  he  got  was  treachery  '^^ — a  false  summons 
involving  him  in  a  heavy  fine — his  orchard  plundered  and 
the  vines  and  olives  mutilated — a  small  Athenian  boy  sent 
into  his  garden  to  pick  the  roses  (they  hoped  that  Apollodorus 
would  catch  him  and  thrash  him  and  lay  himself  open  to  a 

pretending  not  even  to  see  those  whom  they  have  abready  ruined,  insert 
their  sting — that  is,  their  money — into  some  one  else  who  is  not  on  his 
guard  against  them,  and  recover  the  parent  sum  many  times  multi- 
plied into  a  family  of  children  :  and  so  they  make  drone  and  pauper  to 
abound  in  the  State. — Yes,  he  said,  there  are  plenty  of  them— that  is 
certain  "  (Jowett). 

1  Plut.  Alcib.  23  ;  and  Demosthenes,  Meidias,  133. 

^  If  he  had  had  the  luck  to  live  a  generation  later,  one  at  least  of 
them  would  have  been  a  negro  (Theophrastus,  Characters,  7). 

^  Phorm.  45.  *  Phorm.  39,  45  ;  Polydes,  34,  7  ;   Steph.  A.  78. 

^  Steph.  A.  77.  *  Polydes,  30;  65.  '  c.  Neaeram. 

8  Nicostr.  4.  9  Nicostr.  6  ft.  i»  Nicostr.  13-17. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  327 

charge  of  assaulting  a  citizen) — and,  finally,  it  came  to  fisticuffs 
by  the  quarries  as  he  walked  up  from  the  Peiraieus  late  one 
evening.  To  his  wife,  he  assures  the  court,  he  was  deeply 
attached,^  and  he  was  very  anxious  as  to  the  welfare  and 
dowries  of  his  daughters.  2  It  was  horrible  to  think  they 
might  go  undowered  and  unmarried,  when  Stephanos  could 
marry  off  their  cousin  and  give  her  100  minas  as  her  portion. ^ 
One  of  them,  however,  found  a  husband  in  her  mother's 
brother,  Theomnestos.^ 

But  with  all  his  virtues  and  his  neat  account-books  he 
failed  to  impress  his  father's  executors,  Phormion  and  Nicocles, 
and  in  368,  on  his  return  from  the  trierarchy,  they  insisted  on 
the  division  of  the  estate  in  the  interests  of  the  younger  brother. 
To  this  Apollodorus  agreed.  Phormion  still  held  a  lease  of 
the  bank  and  the  factory,  so  the  total  rent  of  the  two  was 
each  year  divided  between  the  brothers,  till  Pasicles  came  of 
age  (in  362)  and  the  lease  ran  out.  Phormion  received  a  com- 
plete discharge  from  all  his  liabilities  to  the  pair  of  them,  and 
with  it  permission  to  have  a  bank  of  his  own.^  The  brothers 
divided  the  last  of  the  property,  Apollodorus  taking  the 
factory  though  it  produced  only  a  talent  per  annum  against 
the  bank's  one  talent  forty  minae,  but,  as  Phormion  pointed 
out,  it  was  the  safer  business.^ 

Meantime,  in  spite  of  the  friction  about  Archippe's  marriage, 
Apollodorus,  with  the  aid  of  Phormion  and  the  bank  books, 
was  busy  in  the  law  courts  pursuing  his  father's  debtors,' 
and  he  was  very  successful.  He  recovered  some  twenty 
talents,  Phormion  says,  but  Pasicles  never  had  his  full  share  ;  ^ 
which  may  be  a  suppressed  reason  for  Apollodorus  taking  the 
factory  instead  of  the  bank.  He  acquired  a  strong  taste  for 
litigation,  which  he  indulged.  He  did  not  limit  himself  to 
private  cases  of  his  own,  but  embarked  on  public  prosecutions, 
of  which  Demosthenes  mentions  five  and  hints  at  more.^ 
He  certainly  did  not  lack  courage. 

The  Athenian  court  was  substantially  a  mere  section  or 
panel  of  the  sovereign  people — so  many  hundred  of  them, 
with  an  odd  one  added  to  prevent  an  equality  of  votes,  for 

1  Polycles,  61.  2  steph.  A.  74.  '  Steph.  A.  66. 

*  Neaera,  2.  ^  Phorm.  10.  •  Phorm.  11. 

'  Phorm.  20,21.  ^  Phorm.  36.  ®  Phorm.  53. 


328  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

every  one  had  to  vote  and  no  one  could  avoid  voting.  There 
was  no  trained  president — the  magistrate  in  charge  was 
selected  by  lot ;  and  there  was  no  consultation  before  the 
vote  was  taken,  there  could  not  well  be.i  Quick  and  intelligent 
as  the  Athenians  were,  their  impatience  of  "  the  strait- waist- 
coat of  a  legal  formula,"  their  want  of  legal  training,  and  the 
universal  instinct  for  equity,  whatever  the  law  says,  might 
lead  to  gross  injustice — as  gross  perhaps  as  any  of  which  the 
purely  legal  mind  is  capable.  Law,  fact,  justice,  scurrility, 
pathos,  trierarchies,  and  dying  mothers — anything  might 
come  in.  In  spite  of  the  assurance  offered  to  the  court  that, 
while  men  will  readily  lie  to  an  arbitrator,  it  is  not  the  same 
thing  to  do  it  "  looking  in  your  faces,"  ^  false  witness  and 
lying  abounded ;  and  when  even  false  witnesses  failed,  we 
read  that  the  regular  thing  was  to  assure  the  court  that  "  you 
all  know  it,"  whatever  the  doubtful  point  might  be.^  Appeals 
to  popular  passion  and  political  feeling  could  not  in  the  nature 
of  things  be  excluded.  The  law  might  become  "  dangerously 
volatile."  Again  and  again  a  speaker  has  to  plead  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  law  as  the  safeguard  of  everybody's  liberty. 
Some  friends,  says  a  litigant  about  400  B.C.,  advised  me  not 
to  go  to  law,  "  not  even  if  I  have  every  confidence  in  my 
case  ;  for,  said  they,  many  things  happen  in  the  law  courts 
contrary  to  what  a  man  would  expect,  and  there  is  more  fluke 
than  justice  in  your  decisions."  *  Sir  Henry  Maine  once 
wrote — and  not  without  warrant — that  "  neither  the  Greeks 
nor  any  society  speaking  and  thinking  in  their  language  ever 
showed  the  smallest  capacity  for  producing  a  philosophy  of 
law."  Yet  the  Greeks — and  by  Greeks  we  chiefly  mean  the 
Athenians — were  the  first  people  who  conceived  of  a  society 
based  on  the  art  of  ruling  by  law,  a  society  that  should  in 
every  detail  rest  on  the  idea  of  justice,  equal  and  free  ;  and 
with  all  that  has  to  be  said  on  the  other  side,  Athens  went  a 
long  way  in  achieving  this  ideal. 

In  many  ways  the  most  interesting  and  satisfactory  of  the 
surviving  speeches   of   ApoUodorus  is   the  one  he  delivered 

^  The  utmost  was  a  few  words  with  the  people  on  the  nearest  seats ; 
cf.  Polycles,  3. 

2  pDem.]  c.  Phorm.  19.  ^  Demosthenes,  Boeot.  B.  53. 

*  Isocrates,  18,  Callim.  9,  10. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  329 

when  he  prosecuted  Polycles  to  recover  the  costs  of  five  months' 
trierarchy.  Here  he  makes  the  minimum  use  of  laws,  of 
clap-trap  appeals,  and  of  those  deductive  arguments  which 
the  rhetoricians  called  tekmeria.  He  tells  a  plain  story,  which 
is  most  illuminative  upon  naval  matters,  life  at  sea,  personal 
character,  and  Athenian  ways  generally. 

In  September  362  news  reached  Athens  of  a  conjunction 
of  doubtful  and  threatening  circumstances  in  the  North 
Aegaean ;  in  particular  the  merchants  and  sea-captains  were 
about  to  sail  out  of  the  Black  Sea  with  their  freights  of  wheat, 
and  the  Byzantines  were  beginning  to  hold  them  up,  wheat 
was  growing  scarce  in  the  Peiraieus,  and  the  price  rising.  So 
the  proposal  was  carried  in  the  Assembly  that  the  trierarchs 
fit  out  a  fleet  for  Thracian  waters.  Among  the  trierarchs  was 
Apollodorus. 

The  duties  of  a  trierarch  were  very  extensive.  In  theory 
the  state  provided  the  ship,  her  tackle  and  equipments,  sails, 
rope,  and  the  like  ;  ^  it  furnished  the  crew  of  rowers  {vavrai, 
ipirai,  TrKrjpmixa,  or  TpL'qpdp')(7]fia)  and  supplied  wages  (fjiiado^) 
and  rations  {a-crrjpecrtov)  for  them.  It  also  paid  the  marines 
{i'Tri^drat)  about  ten  in  number.  The  petty  officers — stewards, 
boatswains,  carpenters,  and  above  all,  pilots  and  steersmen — 
the  trierarch  found  for  himself  and  paid  them  himself.  A 
crown  was  sometimes  offered  to  the  trierarch  who  first  had 
his  trireme  in  order  and  at  the  quayside. 

But  much,  which  the  state  was  required  by  the  laws  to 
provide,  it  was  the  experience  of  trierarchs  that  they  had  to 
see  to  for  themselves ;  and  so  Apollodorus  found.  For  ex- 
ample, a  good  deal  might  depend  on  the  age  of  the  ship.  Ships 
were  built  of  timber  not  quite  seasoned  because  of  the  difficulty 
of  bending  it  to  the  needful  curves.  ^  The  ship  was  given  some 
time  to  dry  and  her  timbers  to  settle,  and  then  the  seams  had 
to  be  calked.  The  trireme  went  a  good  deal  out  of  repair 
if  she  were  long  afloat  or  long  laid  up.^     What  amount  of 

1  [Dem.]  51,  Cor.  Trier.  5  ;  Buerg.  et  Mnes.  26.  Cf.  Polycles^  34; 
Dittenberger,  Sylloge^,  No.  153. 

"  Cecil  Torr,  Ancient  Ships,  p.  34. 

^  Cf.  the  venomous  attack  of  Lysias  on  Thxasybulus  for  sailing  to 
the  Hellespont  in  389  with  old  ships,  "  the  dangers  to  be  yours,  and  the 
profits  to  come  to  his  friends"  (Lysias,  28,  c.  Ergocl.  4). 


330  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

cleaning  the  bottoms  needed,  how  much  new  timber,  calking 
and  repairing  generally  might  have  to  be  done,  no  man  could 
well  predict ;  and  I  do  not  kno'w;  whether  the  trierarchs  or 
the  superintendents  of  the  docks  had  to  do  this  work.  In 
any  case  the  trierarch  had  to  sail  on  the  ship — "  taking  the 
risk  of  sailing  on  her  in  person  "  ^ — and  this  would  tempt  him 
to  see  for  himself  that  she  was  in  good  condition.  The  same 
applied  to  the  sails  and  ropes — the  trierarch  had  better  look 
well  after  them  himself,  as  Apollodorus  did.  Here  is  his  story. 
"  When  the  rowers  enrolled  by  the  demesmen  did  not  come 
to  me,  or  just  a  few  and  those  incapable,  I  sent  them  away, 
and  mortgaged  my  property  and  borrowed  money,  and  so  was 
the  first  to  have  my  ship  manned  with  the  best  rowers  I  could 
get,  by  giving  bounties  and  advance  pay  to  each  of  them  on  a 
large  scale.  Moreover,  I  fitted  out  the  ship  with  my  own  tackle, 
etc.,  from  end  to  end,  and  took  none  of  what  the  state  supplied, 
and  I  decorated  it  with  the  utmost  possible  beauty,  more 
expensively  than  the  other  trierarchs." 

He  was  never  done  with  trouble  with  his  rowers.  He 
treated  them  well,  but  twice  over  almost  the  whole  crew  of 
them  deserted,  especially  when  in  the  course  of  duty  he  was 
sent  back  to  the  Peiraieus  (§  ii).  His  own  high-class  rowers 
were  not  so  keen  on  staying  with  him  as  poorer  hands  ;  they 
were  everywhere  sure  of  a  job.  The  successor  appointed  to 
take  over  his  ship  refused  to  do  so  for  five  months,  in  spite  of 
appeals  and  demands.  Polycles  on  one  occasion  talked  to 
Apollodorus  about  the  way  in  which  he  had  managed  his  ship — 
"  Have  you  so  outdone  everybody  in  wealth  that  you  alone  of 
the  trierarchs  must  have  your  own  tackle  and  gold  decorations  ? 
Who  could  put  up  with  your  lunacy  and  extravagance — a  crew 
utterly  spoiled,  accustomed  to  no  end  of  advance  pay,  to 
immunities  from  the  ordinary  ship  duties,  and  to  washing  in  a 
bath — marines  in  luxury,  and  the  ship's  servants  too  with  full 
pay  ?  You've  taught  the  whole  expedition  bad  ways,  and 
you're  very  largely  to  blame  for  the  soldiers  being  worse  behaved 
with  all  the  other  trierarchs  ;  they  want  the  same  as  5?^ours." 
Apollodorus  answered  with  spirit  and  moderation  that  if 
Polycles  did  not  like  his  men,  if  he  would  only  take  over  the 
ship  (as  he  was  legally  bound  to  do)  he  might  find  his  own  rowers, 

^  Polycles,  59. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  331 

marines  and  all,  if  he  liked,  who  would  sail  with  him  for  nothing. 
"  But  in  any  case  take  over  the  ship." 

The  service  was  very  hard,  and  he  draws  a  striking  picture 
of  his  work  in  convoying  wheat-ships  across  open  sea,  "  about 
the  setting  of  the  Pleiades."  One  night  especially  he  describes, 
which  they  spent  riding  at  anchor  (instead  of  being  beached) 
without  food  or  sleep,  expecting  to  be  attacked  ;  and  on  top  of 
all  there  was  a  gale  with  thunder  and  rain.i  He  found  the 
government  careless,  the  allies  helpless,  and  the  generals  un- 
sound. He  was  detailed,  for  instance,  to  go  to  a  certain  port ; 
but  he  learnt  on  the  way  that  it  was  to  pick  up  an  exile — an 
illegal  act — and  he  refused.  There  was  remonstrance,  but  he 
was  backed  up  by  his  steersman  who  would  take  orders  from 
nobody  else — "  ApoUodorus  is  the  trierarch  and  is  liable  for  all 
he  does  ;  I  get  my  wages  from  him,  and  I'll  sail  where  he  tells 
me." 

The  expense  was  enormous.  Lysias  tells  us  of  trierarchs 
whom  it  cost  80  or  100  minas.^  ApoUodorus  was  kept  short — 
once  for  eight  consecutive  months — of  the  men's  pay,  and  had 
to  pay  them  himself  as  best  he  could.  His  voyage  is  punctu- 
ated with  borrowings  and  mortgages  for  the  purpose.  In 
this  he  says  he  was  much  helped  by  being  known  to  be  the  son 
of  Pasion.3  His  story  serves  to  explain  why  the  rich  felt  so 
bitterly  about  these  state-services  or  liturgies.  Lysias  men- 
tions a  man  who  was  seven  times  trierarch,  several  times  had 
to  furnish  a  tragic  chorus,  and  often  to  pay  eisphora — the 
expense  running  up  in  all  to  nine  talents  two  thousand  drach^ 
mas.*  Isocrates  declaims  on  the  misery  of  life  involved  by  the 
multitude  of  commands  and  liturgies  and  all  the  troubles 
involved  by  them.^  The  oligarch  in  Theophrastus'  Characters 
(29)  cries  out :  "  When  will  they  be  done  ruining  us  with  these 
public  services  and  trierarchies  ?  How  hateful  the  whole  breed 
of  demagogues  is  !  Theseus  was  the  beginning  of  the  city's 
troubles,  when  he  made  one  city  out  of  twelve  and  let  down 
the  monarchy.  And  it  served  him  right  that  he  was  their  first 
victim  !  "  Another  type  of  oligarch  took  another  line  and 
would  say  at  every  public  Assembly,  and  in  every  other  place 
too  :  "  We  are  the  people  who  perform  the  public  services, 

^  Polycles,  22,  23.        2  Lysias,  19,  Aristoph.  42,  43.        ^  Polycles,  56. 
*  Lysias,  19,  Aristoph.  57,  58.  ^  Isocrates,  8,  de  Pace,  128. 


332  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

we  are  the  payers  of  proeisphora  for  you,  we  are  the  rich !  " 
But  Theophrastus'  Boastful  Man  (6)  did  better  still ;  he  would 
reckon  up  in  public  how  much  he  spent  in  relieving  distress 
during  the  famine  (330-326  b.c),  and  "  add  that  he  does  not 
count  any  of  the  trierarchies  or  public  services  he  has  per- 
formed." 

When  Apollodorus  reached  Athens  after  his  seventeen 
months  of  the  fleet,  he  found  his  mother  djdng.  Six  days  later 
she  was  dead,  and  troubles  with  Phormion  began  again, 
Apollodorus  made  certain  demands  ;  four  private  arbitrators 
were  chosen  to  go  into  them  ;  and  Phormion  paid  what  was 
asked  for  the  sake  of  peace.  Apollodorus  for  the  second  time 
gave  his  stepfather  a  full  discharge.  He  also  accepted  a 
fourth  share  of  Archippe's  estate,  and  thereby  admitted  the 
legality  of  her  second  marriage  and  the  legitimacy  of  his  half- 
brothers.  Phormion  received  the  citizenship  in  360,  and  for 
some  years  he  was  left  in  peace  by  Apollodorus.  With  Pasicles 
he  seems  always  to  have  managed  very  well. 

Apollodorus  was  already  a  public  character,*  and  it  was 
apparently  now  that  he  prosecuted  the  generals  he  had  dis- 
covered to  be  "  unsound."  One  of  them  was  put  to  death. 
In  350  he  did  the  state  a  more  useful  service.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Boule  or  Council,  and  as  such  he  carried  first 
the  Boule  and  then  the  Assembly  with  him  in  a  resolution  that 
the  Demos  should  decide  whether  the  balance  of  money  in  the 
hands  of  the  administration  should  go  to  the  Theoric  fund  or 
to  the  War  chest.  It  was  the  policy  of  Demosthenes  that  the 
War  chest  should  come  first,  and  the  Demos  voted  so.  Apollo- 
dorus had  as  councillor  sworn  to  take  the  best  counsel  for  the 
Athenian  Demos,  and  he  supposed  Demos  was  entitled  to  do 
as  Demos  pleased  with  his  own.  But  an  informer,  Stephanos 
by  name,  prosecuted  him  on  a  charge  of  illegality,  producing 
false  witness  to  a  long  outstanding  debt  to  the  Treasury,  ancj 
pleading  for  a  fine  of  15  talents.     Apollodorus'  whole  fortune 

1  Cf .  the  picture  drawn  by  Plato  of  the  democratic  man  {Rep.  viii. 
561D) :  -*  Often  he  is  busy  with  politics,  and  starts  to  his  feet  and  says 
and  does  whatever  comes  into  his  head.  .  .  .  His  life  has  neither  law 
nor  order.  ..."  All  this  description  was  written  before  the  floruit  of 
Apollodorus,  but  his  life  was  "  motley  and  manifold  and  an  epitome 
of  the  lives  of  many," 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  333 

at  the  time  was  only  about  three,  so  that  it  was  indeed  fortunate 
that  the  court  was  content  to  fine  him  one  talent  only  ;  that 
was  serious  enough.  Pasion's  seventy  talents — or  ApoUodorus' 
share  of  them — had  sadly  diminished  in  twenty  years. 

It  was  now  that  ApoUodorus  committed  the  crowning  folly 
of  his  career.  He  saw  Phormion  prosperous,  and  he  conceived 
the  notion  that  there  was  something  wrong  in  the  slave  doing 
so  well,  while  things  went  ill  with  the  master.  In  an  evil  hour 
he  brought  an  action  against  Phormion  to  recover  twenty 
talents — the  property  of  Pasion  left  in  the  bank  and  unclaimed, 
or  at  least  unrecovered,  these  twenty  years  and  more.  By 
this  time  Phormion  was  tired  of  his  stepson,  and  he  turned  to 
Demosthenes.  The  law  permitted  a  special  form  of  plea,  a 
demurrer  [iraparypa^rj), io  bar  the  action, and  on  this  paragraphe 
the  defendant  had  the  first  word.  Phormion  mounted  the  bema 
and  said  something  or  other,  concluding  very  much  as  Diony- 
sodorus  did  in  another  case  :  "  I  have  said  all  I  can.  I  should 
like  one  of  my  friends  to  speak  for  me.  This  way,  Demos- 
thenes." It  appears  from  Aeschines  that  such  a  call  for 
Demosthenes  was  liable  to  be  echoed  by  the  whole  court.^ 

As  a  great  deal  of  this  chapter  has  been  drawn  from  the 
speech  Demosthenes  wrote  for  Phormion,  there  is  no  need 
to  go  over  the  facts  again.  The  speech  was  a  short  one. 
"  Pour  out  the  water,"  says  the  speaker  at  the  end,  indicating 
that  the  water  clock  (clepsydra)  allowed  more  time  than  the 
case  needed.  On  two  main  legal  points  the  defence  rested — 
a  twenty  years'  interval  exceeded  by  fifteen  years  the  period 
within  which  such  an  action  as  ApoUodorus'  was  legal — a 
technicality  perhaps.  Very  well,  then  :  twice  over  ApoUodorus 
had  given  Phormion  a  full  discharge.  On  either  point 
ApoUodorus  was  wrecked.  But  an  Athenian  court  did  not 
care  for  law  so  abruptly  used,  so  the  orator  went  over  the  facts 
of  the  case  with  a  masterly  lucidity  and  force,  demoUshing  as 
he  went  what  he  knew  would  be  the  case  of  the  plaintiff. 
Pasion's  papers  had  been  destroyed  ?  But  ApoUodorus 
accepted  them  when  the  estate  was  divided ;  he  allowed  them 
to  pass  when  Pasicles  came  of  age  ;  he  used  them  in  all  those 

^  Aeschines,  in  Ctes.  203  :  "  Let  no  one  count  it  a  merit  to  himself, 
if,  when  Ctesiphon  asks  whether  he  shall  call  Demosthenes,  he  is  the 
first  to  shout,  *  Call  him  !  call  him  !  '  " 


334  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

many  lawsuits  ;  and  Pasicles,  the  other  brother,  is  entirely 
satisfied.  The  marriage  of  Archippe  ?  It  was  the  usage  of 
bankers,  and  Apollodorus  by  accepting  a  fourth  part  of  her 
estate  had  admitted  it  was  right.  Pasion's  will  a  forgery? 
Then  how  came  Apollodorus  by  the  elder  son's  presheia,  the 
lodging-house  ?  For  twenty  years  the  will  has  been  accepted. 
No,  the  real  ground  of  the  action  is  that  Apollodorus  is  a 
waster  and  means  to  blackmail  a  man  who  owes  his  position 
to  his  character,  his  industry  and  integrity.  The  speech  is, 
as  Schafer  says,  a  masterpiece  with  its  portrayal  of  character 
and  its  ethical  warmth. 

The  court,  despite  the  heliastic  oath  to  hear  both  sides  alike, 
refused  to  hear  Apollodorus  at  all.  He  was  met  with  shouts  of 
Kard^a — the  famous  cry  that  Philocleon  uses  in  the  Wasps  ^ — 
and  he  came  down.  He  did  not  carry  a  fifth  of  the  votes,  and 
so  became  liable  to  a  penalty,  payable  to  Phormion,  of  an  obol 
on  the  drachma,  a  sixth  of  the  sum  claimed,  v/hich  on  twenty 
talents  came  to  three  talents  forty  minae.  Whether  Phormion 
ever  got  it,  or  how  he  got  it,  we  are  not  told. 

Apollodorus,  however,  was  not  yet  done.  He  prosecuted 
one  of  Pasion's  witnesses  for  perjury,  a  man  called  Stephanos, 
but  not  the  Stephanos  of  the  prosecution  of  350.  How  his 
conviction  could  materially  have  affected  the  main  issue  it 
is  hard  to  see.  But  Apollodorus  does  not  confine  himself  to 
Stephanos  ;  he  takes  his  chance  of  explaining  to  a  law  court 
his  case  against  Phormion,  and  it  is  a  very  bad  one.  The 
will  was  a  forgery,  because  to  make  such  a  will  Pasion  must 
have  been  mad,  and  a  madman  could  not  make  a  valid  will. 
He  uses  an  absurd  verbal  juggle  hard  to  represent  in  Enghsh  : 
an  adopted  son  was  in  Attic  Greek  called  made,  and  a  man  so 
made  had  some  limitations  of  freedom  in  making  a  will ;  Pasion 
was  a  made  citizen — made  so  by  law.  Archippe,  he  maintained, 
was  an  heiress,  which  was  untrue.  A  pitiful  set  of  sophistries 
takes  on  a  still  more  unpleasant  character  when  he  accuses 
Phormion  of  having  seduced  his  mother,  and  dismisses  Pasicles 
from  consideration  by  the  surmise  that  Pasicles  may  prove 
to  have  been  the  first  of  Phormion' s  sins  against  the  family. 
After  this  one  loses  sympathy  for  Apollodorus. 

We  are  not  told  how  the  case  ended,  but  we  can  surely 
^  Aristophanes,  Wasps,  979. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PASION  335 

guess.  And  here  Phormion  goes  out  of  our  story.  An  inscrip- 
tion relative  to  docks,  which  is  dated  by  Dittenberger  between 
334-3  and  331-0,  mentions  an  Archippos,  son  of  Phormion  of 
Peiraieus  ; — the  names  strongly  suggest  a  son  of  Phormion  the 
banker  in  the  Peiraieus  and  his  wife  Archippe.  We  know  no 
more  of  them. 

Of  ApoUodorus  we  hear  again.  A  few  years  after  his 
failure  against  Phormion  he  brought  an  action  against  a  certain 
Neaera,  alleged  to  be  the  wife  of  the  Stephanos  who  had  pro- 
secuted him  for  illegality.  But  wife  of  an  Athenian  she  could 
not  be,  for  she  was  an  alien  ;  and  for  passing  herself  off  as 
wife  of  a  citizen,  she  is  liable  to  be  sold  as  a  slave  ;  and  for 
that  ApoUodorus  pleads.  She  was,  he  says,  a  foreigner  and  a 
hetaira,  and  her  daughter  another  of  the  trade,  twice  palmed 
off  on  citizens  as  an  Athenian  girl  and  twice  repudiated.  He 
goes  relentlessly  through  the  whole  story  of  the  wretched 
women,  from  the  purchase  of  Neaera,  with  six  others,  by  a 
woman  skilled  in  these  matters,  emphasizing  point  after  point, 
shame  and  sale  and  shame  again,  bringing  in  well-known  names 
as  he  goes,  Lysias  and  Chabrias  for  instance,  and  citing  wit- 
nesses for  each  squalid  episode.  State  religion  is  involved 
too,  for  Phano,  the  daughter,  had  been  the  wife  of  the  King 
Archon  (till  he  found  her  out  and  drove  her  off),  and  as  such 
she  had  performed  the  sacred  rites  of  the  Queen  on  the  city's 
behalf.  The  speech  ends  with  evidence  to  a  challenge  made  to 
Stephanos  to  submit  Neaera' s  slave-women  to  torture  on  the 
point  of  the  parentage  of  Stephanos'  children,  and  a  final  plea 
to  the  court  to  remember  that  the  gods — "  those  gods  against 
whom  the  defendants  have  sinned — will  see  how  each  man  of 
you  votes  ;  so  vote  justly,  and  avenge  the  gods  and  yourselves 
as  well."  How  this  case  ended,  we  have  to  confess,  as  in  so 
many  instances,  we  do  not  know.  With  it  ApoUodorus  passes 
out  of  history. 

It  is  not  perhaps  very  often  in  history  that  we  are  able 
to  follow  the  fortunes  of  a  single  family  with  much  detail 
over  fifty  or  sixty  years.  Yet  when  we  can,  what  light  may  be 
thrown  on  the  society  whose  history  we  are  studying  !  None 
of  the  leading  figures  in  this  chapter  is  of  any  great  importance, 
yet  their  story  takes  us  into  the  streets  and  bazars  and  courts 
and  counting-houses  of  Athens,  and  gives  us  a  new  background 


336  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  a  new  sense  for  the  world  in  which  those  greater  figures 
moved  whom  we  know  elsewhere  as  framers  of  a  great  language 
and  makers  of  history.  In  this  city  Socrates  and  Plato  lived, 
and  when  Plato  spoke  and  wrote  of  the  money-making  man, 
and  his  aims  and  spirit  and  influence,  it  is  far  from  incon- 
ceivable that  some  of  his  impressions,  some  of  the  impulses 
that  drove  him  to  think  of  the  matter,  came  from  this  house 
of  great  bankers,  whose  son  and  stepson  may  in  his  turn  have 
contributed  something  to  the  picture  of  the  Democratic  man. 
But  we  must  be  just  to  ApoUodorus,  for  he  was  public-spirited 
and  had  enough  intelligence  to  share  some  of  the  ideals  of 
Demosthenes.  If  his  hfe  was  disorderly  and  his  spirit  quarrel- 
some, me  tic  as  he  was  by  origin,  he  was  a  true  Athenian  in 
these  matters,  and  better  than  most  in  his  readiness  to  serve 
the  country  of  which  he  was  "  a  citizen  by  public  vote." 
Perhaps  they  were  not  far  wrong  who  held  that  the  more 
metics  Athens  drew  to  herself  the  better.  At  all  events,  it  was 
of  such  men  that  the  great  cities  of  the  following  age  were 
formed,  and  Alexandria,  Pergamus,  and  Antioch  have  made 
gifts  to  mankind  too  great  to  allow  us  to  dismiss  them  with 
the  easy  contempt  of  an  Athenian  gentleman. 


CHAPTER   XI 

COUNTRY  LIFE 

WHEN  Xenophon  left  Athens  for  the  camp  of  Cyrus,  it 
was  probably  with  little  thought  that  he  was  bidding 
farewell  to  his  country  and  his  people  for  ever.^  Yet, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  the  death  of  Cyrus  left  him  with  the 
rest  of  the  Ten  Thousand  stranded  in  the  heart  of  the  Persian 
kingdom  ;  and,  when  at  last  the  way  to  the  sea  was  found,  he 
felt  himself  still  involved  in  the  fortunes  of  his  fellow-soldiers, 
and  so  he  passed  with  them  into  the  service  of  Sparta,  then 
at  war  with  Persia  or  with  one  Persian  satrap  and  another. 
So  far  there  was  little  to  provoke  much  comment  in  Athens. 
He  had  not  exactly  been  a  soldier  in  the  army  of  Cyrus  as  he 
says,  and  when  Agesilaos  started  for  Asia,  Athens  and  Sparta 
were  nominally  at  peace.  But  in  395  the  chance  came  to  be 
independent  of  Sparta,  and  the  Athenians,  though  at  great 
risk,  took  it  and  joined  in  an  alliance  with  Thebes.  Before 
long  the  European  situation  was  such  that  the  recall  of  Agesilaos 
was  inevitable.  He  brought  back  with  him  what  still  held 
together  of  the  Ten  Thousand  ;  and  the  former  "  commander 
of  the  Cyreians  "  ^  had  nothing  to  do  but  go  with  them.  Under 
this  modest  phrase  (in  a  story  of  the  year  398  B.C.)  it  has  long 
been  understood  that  Xenophon  indicated  himself.  Even  if 
he  were  no  longer  their  commander,  his  position  was  a  very 
difficult  one — ^he  was  by  now  a  personal  friend  of  Agesilaos, 
but  the  king  was  coming  home  again  to  fight  Athens  among 
the  allies  of  the  Thebans.  At  Coroneia  in  August,  394,  Agesilaos 
defeated  the  Thebans  and  their  allies  in  battle,  and  Xenophon, 

^  It  has  been  discussed  whether  he  may  have  paid  a  visit  to  Athens 
between  leaving  Seuthes  and  serving  under  Thibron.  If  he  did,  it  was 
a  mere  passing  visit,  but  even  so  the  evidence  for  it  is  very  slight,  if  it 
is  more  than  mere  surmise. 

2  Hellenica,  iii.  2,  7. 
22 


338  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

it  would  appear,  was  present.  He  had  never  had  any  liking 
for  Thebes,  and  it  would  have  seemed  natural  to  suppose 
that  he  fought  as  usual  at  the  head  of  his  Cyreians,  but  that  he 
expressly  states  that  "  Herippidas  was  in  charge  of  mercen- 
aries."^ The  phrase  may  seem  ambiguous,  though  perhaps 
to  a  close  reader  of  the  story  it  should  be  quite  explicit. 
Whether  we  take  it  as  a  small  piece  of  tacit  defence  or  not, 
for  the  rest  he  maintains  complete  silence  about  himself  till 
we  find  him  an  exUe  at  Scillus.  The  date  and  the  grounds 
of  his  being  exiled  are  alike  unknown  to  us.  Perhaps  he  was 
already  an  exile.^  But  even  so,  the  verdict  of  a  sympathetic 
French  critic  will  appeal  to  many  :  "  however  it  be,  even  if  we 
eliminate  the  aggravating  circumstances  which  are  neither 
proved  nor  probable,  the  mere  fact  of  his  presence  at  Coroneia 
remains  to  revolt  our  conscience  and  our  reason  together."  ^ 

In  any  case,  the  Athenians  seem  to  have  had  some  such 
feeling  about  him,  and  they  passed  a  decree  of  exile  against 
him — a  fact  which,  I  think,  teUs  against  the  sceptical  opinion 
held  by  some  modem  readers  that  Xenophon  was  not  really 
a  conspicuous  figure  in  the  great  march  to  the  sea.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  blame  them  for  this  step  if  Xenophon  really 
fought  at  Coroneia.  Even  if  the  decree  preceded  the  battle, 
it  was  not  altogether  unnatural  in  view  of  what  we  surmise  of 
Xenophon's  antecedents  *  and  of  his  very  prominent  and  out- 
standing position  in  the  story  of  the  last  seven  years'  relations 
between  Greece  and  Persia.  At  the  same  time,  when  we  con- 
sider the  feeling  of  the  Greeks  and  what  they  tolerated  in 
exiles,  who  fought  and  intrigued  savagely  and  relentlessly 
against  their  native  cities, — as  in  the  case  of  Alcibiades,  to 
look  no  further, — Xenophon,  if  he  had  fought  against  Athens 
at  all,  might  have  claimed  the  pardon  of  his  contemporaries 
with  some  title  to  it — in  which  case  posterity  would  have,  I 
think,  to  be  slow  in  giving  judgment  against  him.     But  it  is 

1  Hellenica,  iv.  3,  15,  iievdyei  ^eviicov  (no  article).  Plutarch  definitely 
says  Xenophon  nap^v  avros  ra  'Ayrf(n\am  avvayavi^ofievos  {Agesil.  17). 
i.e.  fought  in  the  battle. 

'^  Grote,  viii.  478,  believes  decidedly  that  Xenophon  was  banished 
after  Coroneia.     Croiset  has  the  same  view. 

*  A.  Croiset,  Xenophon,  p.  120. 

*  His  very  moderate  friendship  for  democracy,  afld  the  possibility 
of  his  service  under  the  Thirty.     Cf.  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch.  ii.  472. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  339 

not  proved  that  he  fought  against  his  country  ;  and  in  any 
case,  whether  he  was  or  was  not  as  yet  an  exile,  his  position, 
due  to  no  very  clear  fault  of  his  own,  was  embarrassing  and 
ambiguous.  However,  like  Thucydides,  he  was  to  be  an 
exile — and  posterity  in  both  cases  has  been  the  gainer.  Xeno- 
phon  mentions  the  fact  twice — once  in  describing  Scillus,  where 
he  lived  an  actual  exile,  and  once  in  speaking  of  his  prepara- 
tions to  leave  Seuthes,  when  he  sajTS  definitely  that  he  was  not 
yet  an  exile. ^  This  last  fact  is  surely  fatal  to  the  theory  of 
later  Greek  writers  that  he  was  exiled  for  taking  part  in  an 
expedition  against  the  Great  King. 

Throughout  Greek  history,  at  least  till  Alexander  threw 
open  the  East  and  the  new  cities  rose,  it  is  plain  that  an  exile 
was  committed  to  a  very  difficult  and  insecure  life.  Brilliant 
as  his  career  had  been,  Athens  had  discarded  Xenophon,  and 
Sparta  did  not  care  for  foreigners.  From  his  own  narrative 
it  is  plain  that  he  must  have  had  enough  of  mercenaries.  So 
a  military  career  was  closed  to  him,  even  if  he  wished  it,  and 
when  we  next  find  him,  it  is  settled  in  some  contentment  in  a 
village  of  Elis  on  an  estate  of  his  own.  When  he  describes  his 
abode  and  its  surrounding  country,  he  says  the  Spartans  gave 
him  the  place.  They  apparently  took  it  from  the  Eleians 
during  or  after  the  campaigns  described  by  Xenophon  in  the 
Hellenica,^  which  are  dated  variously  between  401  and  398. 
More  strictly  speaking,  Sparta  secured  "  autonomy  "  for  the 
Triphylian  towns,  but  in  any  case  Elis  was  dispossessed  of  the 
land,  and  by  and  by  Xenophon  was  settled  there. 

Xenophon  lived  at  Scillus,  it  would  appear,  for  rather 
more  than  twenty  years.  Then  the  battle  of  Leuctra  shook 
the  Spartan  power  to  pieces,  and  Messenians,  Arcadians,  and 
Eleians  came  by  their  own  again.  Xenophon  and  his  sons, 
according  to  one  story,  had  to  fly,  and  found  refuge  in  Corinth  ;  ^ 
but  guides  in  Elis  told  Pausanias  *  that  Xenophon  appealed 

1  Xen.  Anab.  v,  ;^,  y  ;  vii.  7,  57.  Pausanias,  v.  6,  4  (for  the  ex- 
pedition against  the  friendly  Persian  King)  ;  Dio  Chrysostom,  vii.  i ; 
Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  7,  §  51  (for  Laconism).  It  may  be  noted  that 
there  are  those  who  think  Thucydides,  already  an  exile,  was  present  on 
the  Spartan  side  as  a  spectator  at  the  battle  of  Mantineia,  August,  418  ; 
of.  Grundy,  Thuc.  p.  38.  -   -,. 

^  Hellenica,  iii.  2,  21-31. 

3  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  8,  §  53.  *  Pausanias,  v.  6,  4. 


340  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

to  the  Olympic  Council  and,  "  obtaining  forgiveness  from  the 
Eleians,  lived  without  molestation  in  Scillus,"  and  in  fact  died 
and  was  buried  there.  But  perhaps  the  guides  were  more 
eager  to  keep  a  literary  celebrity  than  contemporaries  a  hunt- 
ing gentleman  who  was  conspicuously  a  friend  of  the  Spartans. 
Xenophon  makes  a  very  happy  digression  in  the  Anabasis, 
when  he  is  speaking  of  the  division  of  spoils,  to  tell  us  how 
he  managed  about  that  part  of  the  tithe  for  Apollo  and 
Artemis  which  was  entrusted  to  him.  Artemis'  portion  he 
left  for  the  time  with  her  temple-keeper  Megabyzos  at  Ephesus. 
Afterwards,  he  says,^  "  when  Xenophon  was  in  exile  and  was 
living  by  now  at  Scillus  near  Olympia,  settled  there  by  the 
Lacedaemonians,  Megabyzos  came  to  Olympia  to  see  the 
festival,  and  handed  over  to  him  his  deposit.  Xenophon  took 
it  and  bought  for  the  goddess  a  plot  of  ground  where  the  god 
indicated.  A  river  called  Selinus,  it  happened,  ran  through 
the  plot,  just  as  at  Ephesus  a  river  Selinus  runs  by  the  temple 
of  Artemis.  In  both  streams  there  are  fish  and  shellfish. 
On  the  estate  at  Scillus  there  is  hunting  of  all  the  beasts  of 
chase  there  are.  He  built  an  altar  and  a  temple  with  the 
dedicated  money,  and  ever  after  tithed  the  fruits  of  the  land 
and  made  a  sacrifice  to  the  goddess,  and  all  the  citizens  and 
neighbours  with  their  wives  took  part  in  the  festival.  The 
goddess  herself  provided  the  banqueters  with  meat,  loaves, 
wine,  and  sweetmeats,  with  portions  of  the  victims  from  the 
sacred  pasture  and  of  the  animals  killed  in  hunting.  For 
Xenophon's  boys  and  those  of  the  other  citizens  made  a  hunt 
for  the  festival ;  and  grown  men,  too,  who  wished,  joined  in. 
The  game  was  taken  partly  from  the  sacred  ground  itself  and 
partly  from  Pholoe,  boars  and  gazelles  and  deer.  The  spot  is 
on  the  road  from  Lacedaemon  to  Olympia,  about  twenty 
stades  (two  and  a  half  miles)  from  the  temple  of  Zeus  in 
Olympia.  In  the  dedicated  ground  there  is  meadow-land,  and 
hills  covered  with  forest,  well  fitted  to  rear  pigs,  goats,  cattle, 
and  horses.  Even  the  sumpter  animals  of  the  visitors  to  the 
festival  have  their  entertainment.  Round  the  temple  is  a 
grove  of  fruit  trees  planted.  The  temple  is  modelled  after  that 
in  Ephesus — a  small  copy  of  it  ;  and  the  image  is  a  copy  in 
cypress-wood  of  the  golden  one  in  Ephesus.  Beside  the  temple 
^  Anab.  v.  3,  7-13. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  341 

is  a  stele  with  these  words  :  '  The  place  is  sacred  to  Artemis. 
He  that  holds  it  and  enjoys  the  fruits  thereof  shall  sacrifice 
the  tithe  of  it  year  by  year.  From  the  residue  he  shall  keep 
in  order  the  temple.  If  any  man  fail  in  this,  the  goddess 
will  look  to  it.'  " 

The  passage  shows  us  the  man — with  his  piety — his  gift 
for  arrangement  and  love  of  order — his  interest  in  hunting — 
his  neighbourliness — and,  perhaps  one  might  add,  his  attention 
to  diet,  ample  but  not  luxurious.     "  So  there,"  says  Diogenes 
Laertius,^    "  he    continued — hunting    and    entertaining    his 
friends  and  writing  history  "  ;   and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  with  these  and  other  interests,  hardly  less  keen,  he  must 
have  enjoyed  life.     And  yet,  there  is  a  touch  of  the  tragic 
in  it. 2     It  is  not  the  life  he  had  chosen.     The  great  career 
in  the  East  with  Cyrus  for  his  friend  is  gone.     He  will  not  see 
the  Attic  deme  of  his  boyhood  again,  the  hills  where  he  first 
hunted,  the  fields  where  he  learnt  to  love  farming.     Sparta 
took  little  notice  of  foreigners  or  their  admiration.     So  a 
man  who  had  dreamed  of  doing  great  things  himself  has  to 
settle  down  to  picture  them — great  deeds  done  by  others,  by 
heroes  he  has  known  in  the   body,  by  dream-heroes  he  has 
fashioned  in  his  brain.     But  perhaps  even  so  he  was  doing 
more  than  he  thought  or  hoped  ;    for   not  every  writer  of 
books  could  boast  of  having  set  on  fire  with  a  passion  that 
never  died  while  life  lasted,  such  men  as  Zeno  and  Alexander. 
A  modern  traveller  will  tell  us  more  of  the  outward  scene. ^ 
"  On  emerging  from  the  defile,  a  new  extent  of  low  country 
presents  itself,  richly  wooded  and  well  watered.     This  is  the 
vale  of  the  Alpheus.     We  coast  for  some  distance  along  the 
northern  base  of  the  same  mountain,  the  declivities  of  which 
on  this  side  are  of    the  finest  description  of    rock  scenery, 
beautifully  clothed  with  forest-trees  and  evergreens.     Every 
half-mile  gushes  a  copious  fountain  of  pure  water  from  the 
roots  of  gigantic  planes,  forming  so  many  tributaries  to  the 
sacred  stream  that  flows  in  the  vale  below.     The  features  of 

^  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  8,  §  52. 

2  On  this  see  Ivo  Bruns,  Lit.  Forty  at,  p.  414. 

^  W.  Mure,  Journal  of  a  Tour  in  Greece,  vol.  ii.  p.  273  (1842).  E.  N, 
Gardiner,  Greek  Athletic  Sports  (1910),  p.  36,  says  that  in  old  days  the 
vegetation  was  far  more  luxuriant  than  now. 


342  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  landscape  now  gradually  undergo  a  complete  change. 
The  common  deciduous  oak  gives  place  to  the  ilex,  and  soon 
after  to  the  black  round-headed  pine,  which  covers  the  country 
on  each  side  of  the  river  in  scattered  groups,  to  some  distance 
north  of  the  plain  of  Olympia.  The  soil  becomes  sandy,  and 
the  hillocks  and  rocky  eminences  which  enliven  the  surface 
of  the  valley  assume  a  variety  of  fantastical  forms,  often 
presenting  so  close  a  resemblance  to  ruined  forts  or  towns 
that  the  illusion  is  scarcely  dispelled  till  the  traveller  reaches 
the  spot.  This  region  is  described  by  Pausanias  as  precisely 
similar  in  character  in  his  own  age.  In  the  midst  of  it,  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  river,  a  few  miles  to  the  east  of  Olympia, 
was  Scillus." 

Such  was  the  place — a  little  out  of  the  world  in  general, 
but  at  festival- time  a  centre  of  life,  a  centre  where  there 
gathered  Greeks  of  aU  sorts  from  every  Greek  land  and  settle- 
ment, men  with  every  kind  of  interest  from  athletics  to 
politics  and  philosophy  —  two  or  three  miles  only  from 
Xenophon's  home.i 

What  that  home  was  like — or  what  he  wished  it  to  be; — 
we  can  read  in  his  little  book  the  Oeconomicos — a  work  with 
a  charm  of  its  own,  and  unique  in  being  the  one  presentment 
that  we  have  of  country  life  in  Classical  Greece.  It  has  never 
lacked  admirers.  Cicero  did  it  into  Latin,  Ruskin  (with  the 
co-operation  of  two  friends)  into  EngUsh.  It  was  the  founda- 
tion on  which  Ruskin  built  all  his  studies  in  Political  Economy, 
his  biographer  and  editor  tells  us.^  It  shows  "  the  ideal  of 
domestic  life." 

The  fabric  of  the  story  is  simple.  Socrates,  after  some 
talk  with  Critobulus,  tells  him  how  he  met  a  real  kalos 
kdgathos,  and  then  narrates  their  conversation.  It  was  not 
otherwise  known  that  Socrates  had  so  much  interest  in  fields 
and  farms  and  their  cultivation,  and  most  readers  feel  that 
for  the  larger  part  of  the  book  the  real  Socrates  is  a  far-away 
memory,  though  there  are  flashes  of  some  one  very  like  him 
from  time  to  time.  The  centre  of  the  book  is  the  kalos 
kdgathos,  Ischomachus,  and  he  is  led  on  to  do  most  of  the 
talking,  never  dreaming  it  was  all  to  be  reported.     He  is,  as 

^  Cf.  Grote,  viii.  480. 

*  Collected  Works,  vol.  xxxi.,  Bibliotheca  Pastorum. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  343 

Grote  says,  translating  the  word  of  Socrates,  "  the  model  of 
an  Athenian  gentleman,  and  the  life  he  lives  " — "  it  is  the 
life  of  an  English  lord,"  cries  a  French  critic. ^  Perhaps  he 
is  a  little  like  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  but  of  a  more  robust 
intelligence.  While  Xenophon  regrettably  has  to  live  in  Elis, 
Ischomachus  has  his  home  in  Attica,  and  his  biographer  has  his 
eye  on  his  own  country.  What  is  more,  he  means  his  book  to 
be  read  there,  and  in  his  own  perfectly  clear  but  unobtrusive 
way  he  calls  attention  to  certain  rnatters  of  importance. 

The  father  of  Ischomachus  was  a  man  of  the  same  sort 
as  his  son — "  he  would  never  let  me  buy  a  farm  in  good 
condition  ;  but  if  he  chanced  on  one  idle  or  unplanted  either 
through  the  neglect  or  the  incompetence  of  the  owners,  he 
would  advise  me  to  buy  it.  A  cultivated  estate,  he  said,  cost 
a  lot  of  money  and  allowed  of  no  improvement ;  and  that 
took  away  the  pleasure,  for  he  held  that  to  see  whatever 
you  owned  steadily  improving  was  a  great  joy."  He  made 
big  profits  out  of  it,  and  besides  it  was  his  hobby — it  gave 
him  something  to  do.^  The  same  interest  Ischomachus  had, 
and  it  was  perhaps  to  his  passion  for  agriculture  that  he  owed 
a  good  deal  of  his  health  and  energy,  for  he  lives  a  strenuous 
life.^  Socrates  remarks  that  at  one  and  the  same  time  he 
manages  to  combine  a  recipe  for  health  and  strength  with 
efficiency  for  war  and  the  advancement  of  his  fortune.  This 
is  true,  for  Ischomachus  says  quite  frankly  he  wishes  to  be 
rich — it  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  be  able  to  honour  the  gods  in 
the  grand  style,  to  help  a  friend  in  need,  and  "  so  far  as  lies 
in  my  power,  not  to  leave  my  city  unadorned  with  anything 
wealth  can  supply."  *  He  is  always  master  of  the  situation 
— never  bullies,  is  never  worried — but  by  a  kind  of  dogged 
gentleness  and  persuasiveness  he  carries  his  point.  He  has 
a  knack  of  being  obeyed  and  of  being  obeyed  intelligently  ;  he 
makes  his  people  see  what  is  wanted,  he  treats  them  as  reason- 
able creatures,  and  makes  them  think.  If  he  has  a  defect, 
it  is  that,  in  M.  Hemardinquer's  phrase,  he  is  "  un  peu  trop 
sermonneur"  —  "the  Greeks,"  he  says,  "and  Xenophon 
above  all,  cannot  bring  themselves  to  be  right  and  to  be  done 

^  Hemardinquer,  La  CyropSdie,  p.  1 16. 

^  Oecon.   20,    22-25  •   oiras  expi  o  tl  ttoioIt]  &[ia  Ka)  acfjeXovfievos  fjSoiTO. 

*  Oecon.  II,  14.  ■*  Oecon.  ii,  9. 


344  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

with  it."  1  Sometimes  the  people  round  him  must  have 
found  him  a  shade  too  improving,  and  done  absurd  or  silly 
things  just  as  relief  from  being  so  steadily  reasonable. 

We  have  seen  already  that  there  actually  was  a  historical 
Ischomachus  who  might  have  talked  with  Socrates,  of  whom 
Lysias  tells  us  in  a  speech,  dated  387,  that  as  long  as  he  lived 
everybody  reckoned  he  must  be  worth  more  than  seventy 
talents,  but  when  he  died  his  two  sons  hardly  inherited  ten 
talents  apiece. ^  But  Xenophon  seems  to  have  taken, his  name 
for  his  own  purposes,  and  made  an  ideal  figure  of  what  he 
would  have  wished  himself  to  be.  There  is  no  dark  line  in 
the  picture,  and  he  has  all  the  good  qualities  we  recognize  in 
Xenophon — order,  piety,  control,  persuasion,  kindness,  and 
sweet  temper — and  perhaps  some  of  his  foibles.  Ischomachus, 
we  might  even  say,  is  Cyrus — the  Cyrus  of  the  Cyropaedeia — 
in  domestic  life — a  republican  Cyrus  who  has  gone  back  like 
a  Washington  to  his  Mount  Vernon. 

More  interesting  in  some  ways  than  Ischomachus  is  his 
wife,  for  here  we  are  given  a  glimpse  inside  a  real  Athenian 
home  of  what  we  might  call  the  upper  middle  classes.  The 
age  saw  woman  given  a  new  place  altogether  in  Tragedy,  but 
neither  there  nor  in  Comedy  could  we  expect  to  see  the  real 
domestic  life.  Aristophanes  has  many  allusions  to  the  daily 
round,  the  baby,  the  Thracian  "  slavey,"  the  drinking  habits 
of  married  women,  and  much  that  is  vulgar  and  worse  : 

They  dye  their  wools 
With  boiling  tinctures,  in  the  ancient  style. 
You  won't  find  them,  I  warrant,  in  a  hurry 
Trying  new  plans.  .  .  . 
They  roast  their  barley  sitting,  as  of  old  : 
They  on  their  heads  bear  burdens,  as  of  old  : 
They  keep  their  Thesmophoria,  as  of  old  : 
They  victimize  their  husbands,  as  of  old  : 
They  buy  themselves  sly  dainties,  as  of  old  : 
They  love  their  wine  unwatered,  as  of  old  :  ^ 

^  Hemardinquer,  La  Cyyopedie,  p.  114. 

'^  Lysias,  xix.  46  ;  Meyer,  Gesch.  des  Alt.  v.  §  872.  Dakyns,  vol.  iii. 
p.  li,  cites  Plut.  Moralia,  iii.  i,  p.  79  (Wytt.),  for  a  chance  meeting 
between  Ischomachus  and  Aristippus  at  Olympia,  and  a  discussion 
about  Socrates,  which  led  Aristippus  to  go  to  Athens.    Cf.  p.  322. 

^  Ecclesiaziusae,  215,  tr.  B.  B.  Rogers.  The  point  about  carrying 
things  on  their  heads  was  that  men  did  not.     Cf.  Herodotus,  ii.  35,  on 


COUNTRY  LIFE  345 

and  so  on.  He  gives,  when  it  suits  him,  the  vulgar,  popular, 
comic  view  of  married  women,  and  sums  it  up  in  a  proverb  : 
"  Neither  with  them — hang  them  ! — nor  without  them."  ^ 
ApoUodorus — not  one  of  the  finer  spirits  of  Athens — reminds 
a  popular  court  of  the  distinctions  they  all  drew  :  "  Hetairai 
we  have  for  pleasure,  concubines  for  daily  bodily  comfort, 
wives  for  the  production  of  legitimate  children  and  in  order 
to  have  a  reliable  guard  of  one's  belongings."  ^  In  the  great 
Funeral  Speech  Pericles  gives  his  ideal  for  the  Athenian  matron 
in  a  sentence  :  "  If  I  am  to  speak  of  womanly  virtues  to  those 
of  you  who  will  henceforth  be  widows,  let  me  sum  them  up  in 
one  short  admonition  :  To  a  woman  not  to  show  more  weak- 
ness than  is  natural  to  her  sex  is  a  great  glory,  and  not  to  be 
talked  about  for  gx)od  or  evil  among  men."  ^  And  then  he 
leaves  the  subject.  It  was  the  popular  view,  but  everybody 
knew  that  it  did  not  represent  the  ideal  of  Pericles  himself. 
"  Silence,"  said  Sophocles  in  the  Ajax,  "  is  a  woman's  glory  "  ; 
but,  adds  Aristotle,  "  this  is  not  equally  the  glory  of  man."  * 

Girls'  education  hardly  existed  in  the  honest  homes  of 
Athens.  "  You  married  your  wife,"  says  Socrates  to  Crito- 
bulus,  "  didn't  you  ?  when  she  was  a  very  young  girl,  and 
had  seen  and  heard  the  very  least  that  was  possible  ?  "  ^  And 
Critobulus  admits  it.  "  What  chance  had  she  of  knowing 
anything,"  says  Ischomachus  a  few  pages  later  of  his  own 
wife,  "  when  she  was  not  yet  fifteen  when  she  came  to  me, 
and  all  her  life  before  the  utmost  care  had  been  taken  of 
her,  so  that  she  might  see  as  little  as  possible,  hear  as  little  as 
possible,  and  ask  as  few  questions  as  possible  ?  Don't  you 
think  one  should  be  satisfied  if  all  her  knowledge  consists  in 
knowing  how  to  take  wool  and  make  a  garment  of  it,  and  if 
she  has  seen  how  the  spinning  tasks  are  assigned  to  the  slave- 
women  ?  For,  as  regards  the  belly  and  so  on,  Socrates,  she 
had  been  very  well  trained — and  I  think  that  means  a  great 
deal  in  training  man  or  woman."  «  "  How  could  I  help  you  ?  " 
the  contrasts  of  Egypt,  where  this  is  reversed.  Cf.  p.  17.  For  this 
general  character  of  women,  cf.  the  speaker  in  Plato,  Laws,  781  a,  b, 
stealth  and  dishonesty. 

^  Lysistrata,  1039)  ovTe  crvv  iravcoXedpoicnv  ovt  avev  TravcoXidpoov. 

2  Neaera,  122.  3  xhuc.  ii.  45  (Jowett). 

*  Sophocles,  Ajax,  293  ;   Aristotle,  Pol.  i.  13,  11,  p.  1260a. 

^  Xen.  Oecon.  3,  13.  «  Oecon.  7,  5,  6. 


346  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  poor  child  asks  him,  "  what  power  have  I  ?  No,  it  all 
depends  on  you.  My  business,  my  mother  said,  was  to  be 
modest."  ^  It  seems  a  limited  training,  even  if  in  addition 
she  did  pick  up  a  few  notions  about  paint  and  cosmetics. 

Aristophanes  lets  us  see  that  sometimes  a  girl  of  good  family 
came  out  of  doors  at  one  or  another  public  religious  function, 
taking  part  in  mysteries  she  did  not  understand,  and  sometimes 
perhaps  had  better  not : 

Bore  at  seven  the  mystic  casket ; 
Was,  at  ten,  our  Lady's  miller  ; 

Then  the  yellow  Brauron  bear  ; 
Next  (a  maiden  tall  and  stately 

With  a  string  of  figs  to  wear) 
Bore  in  pomp  the  holy  Basket.  ** 

Ischomachus  says  nothing  of  all  this — indeed  implies  that  in 
the  case  of  his  wife  there  had  been  none  of  it. 

But  it  is  clear  already  that,  as  might  have  been  expected 
in  a  society  where  everything  was  being  submitted  to  question 
and  remodelled  by  reason,  the  doubt  was  expressed  whether 
this  training  of  girls  was  sufficient  or  even  right  at  all — whether 
the  type  of  woman  it  bred  was  all  that  could  be  made  of  the 
material — whether  a  wife  had  best  be  secluded,  dull  and  un- 
companionable ("  Is  there  anybody,"  asks  Socrates,  "  to  whom 
you  entrust  more  serious  matters  than  to  your  wife — or  to 
whom  you  talk  less  ?  "  ^) — whether  the  wife  might  not  be  as 
well  educated  and  as  companionable  as  the  hetaira.  And 
then  it  would  seem  that  more  fundamental  questions  still 
were  asked,  for  all  those  so  far  mentioned  imply  that  woman 
is  a  sort  of  adjunct  to  man,  a  complementary  nature.  Is 
woman  really  a  mere  complement  to  man  ?  What  is  her 
<f)V(n<i,  seeing  that  to-day  in  Athens  everybody  talks  about 
Nature — what  is  woman's  nature  ?  The  parodies  of  Aristo- 
phanes of  this  feminist  movement,  the  sympathetic  interest 
in  it  shown  by  Plato,  the  very  care  and  seriousness  with  which 

1  Oecon.  7,  14,  a-axppovelv — it  has  the  two  suggestions  of  chaste 
and  sensible.     Ischomachus  in  reply  takes  up  the  latter. 

2  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  641,  B.  B.  Rogers.  '*  Yellow"  because 
she  wore  a  saffron  robe,  crowded  out  by  exigencies  of  English  verse. 
What  even  domestic  rites  might  be  is  shown  in  Acharnians,  241  ff. 

2  Oecon.  3,  12. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  347 

Aristotle  refutes  the  doctrine  that  man's  nature  and  woman's 
are  the  same,i  show  aHke  how  much  in  earnest  the  people  were 
who  raised  the  questions.  ' '  Well,' '  says  Socrates,  as  he  watches 
the  dancing-girl  twirling  and  catching  hoops  as  she  dances, 2 
"  the  girl  shows  that  woman's  nature  is  no  worse  than  man's. 
So  any  one  of  you  who  has  a  wife  may  boldly  teach  her  to  be 
what  he  wishes  of  her."  "  And  what,"  asks  Antisthenes  in 
his  ad  hominem  way,  "  what  of  Xanthippe,  of  women  past, 
present,  and  future,  most  crabbed  and  curst  ?  "  Socrates  has 
a  ready  answer  ;  but  then  the  girl  starts  somersaults  into  and 
out  of  a  hoop  set  with  swords,  and  Socrates  returns  to  his  point 
that  courage  can  be  taught — if  a  woman  can  learn  it  like  this. 
And  Antisthenes  suggests  that  the  Syracusan,  her  owner, 
might  exhibit  the  girl  to  the  whole  city  (for  a  fee)  and  teach 
all  the  Athenians  the  art  of  facing  the  spears  of  the  enemy 
at  close  quarters.  So  in  earnest  and  in  jest  the  question  is 
debated ;  and  even  Aristophanes,  who  makes  game  of  the 
movement,  contrives  absent-mindedly  to  put  on  his  stage — 
he  does  it  twice — a  woman  capable  of  broad  outlook  and  wide 
interests,  equal  to  forming  large  plans,  to  starting  and  con 
trolling  a  great  organization,  able  to  speak  well  and  sensibly 
of  woman's  contribution  to  the  state  ^ — but  of  course  it  is  all 
fun  and  nonsense,  and  he  ends  off  his  plays  in  frolic  and  obscene 
absurdities — ^which  proves  how  ridiculous  the  whole  thing  is. 
But  Plato  and  Antisthenes  did  not  think  it  ridiculous,  and  they 
were,  each  in  his  own  way,  ready  to  remodel  human  life 
from  top  to  bottom  on  the  basis  of  the  equality  of  the  sexes. 

Plato  in  the  Fifth  Book  of  his  Republic  is  quite  explicit 
as  to  what  an  ideal  society  requires  in  this  matter  of  woman's 
education,  and  he  does  not  shrink  from  what  follows.  He  does 
not  recognize  any  fundamental  difference  between  men  and 
women  except  sex.  Dogs,  male  and  female,  are  used  alike  in 
hunting — the  males  are  stronger,  it  is  true,  but  huntsmen 
do  not  regard  the  rearing  of  puppies  as  labour  enough  for  the 
females  (451  d).  Is  there  any  pursuit  or  art  of  civic  life  in 
regard  to  which  the  nature  of  a  woman  differs  from  a  man's 
nature  ?  (455 a).  "  Need  I  waste  time  in  speaking  of  the  art 
of  weaving,  and  the  management  of  pancakes  and  preserves, 

^  See  Ivo  Bruns,  Frauenemanzipation,  in  Vortrdge  u.  Aufsdtze. 

^  Xen.  Symp.  2,  8-13.       ^  ln^^Q  Lysistrata  dindth.^  Ecclesiazusae. 


348  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

in  which  womankind  does  really  appear  to  be  great,  and  in 
which  for  her  to  be  beaten  by  a  man  is  of  all  things  the  most 
absurd  ?  "  (4550).^  So  much  for  woman's  sphere  ;  a  woman 
as  well  as  a  man  may  be  a  physician,  a  musician,  a  philosopher, 
or  have  a  turn  for  gymnastic  and  military  exercises.  If  the 
difference  consists  only  in  the  woman  bearing  and  the  man 
begetting,  this  does  not  amount  to  a  proof  that  the  education 
for  both  should  not  be  the  same  (454E).  And  Plato  would 
give  them  the  same  education — music,  gymnastic,  and  the  art 
of  war  (452 a),  though  he  expects  that  shallow  wits  will  find 
something  ridiculous  in  the  sight  of  women  naked  in  the 
palaestra,  wrestling  with  men — especially  if  they  are  old  and 
wrinkled  (452B) ;  still  it  is  only  a  matter  of  custom.  When  he  has 
once  established  this  equality  of  sexes,  he  proceeds  to  his  famous 
community  of  wives  and  the  abolition  of  the  family.  Women 
will  still  be  allowed  to  suckle  the  babies,  it  would  seem,  but  care 
will  be  taken  that  none  of  them  knows  which  is  her  own. 

What  the  women  thought  of  the  established  order — or 
what  they  would  ha^e  thought  of  Plato's  plan — was  not 
inquired.  Plato  was  not  less  indifferent  to  the  likes  and  dis- 
likes of  individuals  than  the  most  conservative  traditionalist 
of  his  day.  Euripides,  however,  in  his  Medea  ^  puts  in  unmis- 
takeable  language  the  feelings  of  some  of  the  women.  Of  all 
things,  says  Medea,  that  have  life  and  understanding  woman 
is  the  most  miserable.  It  is  money  that  makes  marriage — and 
the  man  is  lord  of  her  body,  whoever  he  is  ;  good  or  bad,  she 
cannot  refuse  him.  She  knows  nothing  whatever  of  what  he 
will  be,  when  she  leaves  her  home.  If  she  manages  herself 
well,  and  he  lives  with  her  content,  her  lot  is  happy ;  if  not, 
she  had  better  die.  The  man  can  find  satisfaction  outside, 
if  he  is  unhappy  at  home  ;  not  she.  But  she  has  a  quiet  life 
at  home,  free  from  peril,  and  he  must  face  the  ranks  of  spear- 
men !  Fools  !  I  had  rather  thrice  face  battle,  shield  on  arm, 
than  once  bear  a  child.  Euripides  was  counted  among  the 
ancients  a  hater  of  woman,^  and  certainly  his  characters  say 
a  good  deal  against  the  sex.*     But  it  is  one  thing  to  recognize 

^  Jowett's  translation.  ^  Eur,  Medea,  230-251, 

'Aristophanes,  Thesm.  383-458. 

*  See  Decharme,  Euripide  et  I' esprit  de  son  theatre,  pp.  133  ff.,  for  a 
discussion  of  this — a  rather  trivial  treatment  of  it,  though  there  is 


COUNTRY  LIFE  349 

that  woman's  lot  is  hard  or  even  unjust — another  thing  to 
enjoy  the  emancipated  type/  ill-trained  to  begin  with,  and 
not  better  balanced  now  for  a  sudden  swing  to  another  ex- 
treme, the  victim  of  theories  and  fancies,  nationalist,  in- 
dividualist, anarchist. 

But  let  us  turn  from  this  babel  to  the  quiet  house  at  Scillus 
or  the  house  of  Ischomachus,  whichever  it  is.  "  Greek  love- 
poetry,"  it  has  been  said  by  a  modern  scholar,  the  author  of  a 
brilliant  book  on  Greek  genius,  "  is  not  the  love-poetry  of  the 
Brownings,"  2  and  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  what  Ischomachus 
or  his  chronicler  would  have  made  of  a  passage  that  began  : 

O  lyric  Love,  half  angel  and  half  bird, 
And  aU  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire. 

Their  wives  rather  probably  could  not  read  or  write.  None  of 
them,  one  can  believe,  would  have  seen  much  in  the  Vita 
Nuova  ;  and  perhaps  they  would  have  preferred  something 
simpler  to  the  Phaedrus.  Ischomachus  did  not  consciously 
marry  in  order  "  to  realize  himself  "  like  a  modem  philosopher, 
nor  like  the  plain  man  of  to-day  because  he  "  liked  the  girl.'' 
It  was  rather  a  well-thought-out  selection  of  a  partner,  for 
reasons  financial,  social,  and  what  we  might  call  eugenic.  He 
tells  her  quite  frankly  that  they  are  partners,  and  very  quickly 
gets  down  to  business.  But  he  does  it  with  tenderness  and 
grace — she  was  only  fourteen,  he  tells  Socrates  ;  and  his  words 
imply  that  he  thought  of  her  as  a  shy  little  wild  bird,  for  he 
waited,  he  said,  "  till  she  was  tamed  and  would  come  to  his 
hand."  ^  He  and  her  parents,  he  told  her,  had  been  seeking 
the  same  thing — the  best  possible  partner  in  house  and 
children  ;  and  so  he  had  chosen  her,  and  her  parents  had 
chosen  him. 

Ischomachus  now  explains  to  his  wife  how  they  can  help 
each  other.  He  does  not  quote  Plato  to  her  and  formally 
disavow  his  ideas,  but  modern  readers  and  perhaps  ancient 
readers  have  thought  that  Xenophon  had  Plato  in  mind.  For 
something  in  his  remark  (on  p.  154)  that  Greek  woman  by  training 
and  social  conditions  was  in  fact  beneath  Greek  man. 

^  Cf .  Hippolytus,  640. 

2  R.  W.  Livingstone,  Greek  Genius,  pp.  81,  82. 

^  Oecon.  7,  10,  eVet  rjbr]  jjlol  ;^6£po7^^7;?  fjv  /cat  ereTiOaa-evTO  &(TTe  BiaXeyeadat. 
If  my  rendering  is  too  sentimental,  Liddell  and  Scott's  Lexicon  does 
not  fail  in  that  way. 


350  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

it  is  explained  to  the  little  wife  ^  that  the  gods  had  thought  out 
their  device  very  carefully  when  they  made  the  pair  called 
male  and  female — with  intent  that  both  should  have  the  utmost 
good  and  comfort  out  of  their  fellowship.  There  are  children 
to  produce — to  keep  the  race  from  dying  out,  and  to  look  after 
their  parents  in  old  age.  Man  again  is  not  like  the  animal — 
the  instinct  that  developed  the  house  has  altered  everything. 
God  made  the  man's  body  to  bear  heat  and  cold  and  hardship, 
the  outdoor  things,  and  to  the  woman  he  gave  the  duties 
of  home,  the  care  of  the  babies  he  put  into  her  very  nature,  and 
"gave  her  a  larger  gift  of  loving  babies  than  he  did  to  the 
man  "  (7,  24).  God  gave  them  both  memory  and  carefulness, 
for  the  common  good  of  both — it  would  be  hard  to  say  which 
has  most  of  these.  And  just  because  their  natures  are  not 
every  way  alike,  they  need  each  other  more.  What  God  has 
ordained,  custom  has  established  ;  and,  what  is  more,  God's 
laws  implanted  in  nature  maintain  themselves  and  avenge 
themselves.  So  he  tells  his  wife  she  is  to  be  the  queen  bee  in 
their  hive  ;  for  the  queen  bee  keeps  all  the  others  busy,  knows 
all  they  do,  safeguards  and  manages  all  that  is  stored  up, 
sees  to  the  "  weaving  "  of  the  cells  and  the  nurture  of  the 
young,  and  when  the  time  comes  sends  forth  the  swarm. 
"  Shall  I  have  to  do  all  this  ?  "  she  asks.  Yes,  he  tells  her,  and 
adds  like  a  man,  that  there  is  another  duty  too,  one  she  may 
not  like — if  any  of  the  slaves  fall  sick,  she  will  have  to  nurse 
them  and  tend  them  till  they  are  well.  "  By  Zeus,"  says  the 
little  wife,  "  I  shall  like  that  best  of  all — if  they  will  be  grateful 
for  it  and  be  friendlier  than  before."  "  I  was  delighted  at 
her  answer,"  Ischomachus  tells  Socrates.^ 

A  French  critic  asks,  with  some  humour,  if  Ischomachus  in 
all  this  talk  with  Socrates  has  not  the  air  of  revealing  to  us  a 
new  discovery — that  woman  can  be  intelligent,  that  the  gods 
have  given  her  memory  and  other  faculties.  ^  There  have  been 
witty  women  who  have  held  that  this  has  always  been  to  men 
a  startling  discovery,  that  it  still  is.  The  main  point  of 
interest,  however,  is  the  attitude  of  Xenophon  to  the  marriage 
question.     He  holds,  as  Dr.  Adam  says,*  "  the  orthodox  Greek 

^  Oecon.  7,  18  ff.,  TToXii  diea-KefXfihas.  ^  Oecon.  7,  -^7,  38. 

*  Masqueray,  Euripide  et  ses  idees,  p.  301. 

*  Note  on  Plato,  Rep.  v.  453. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  351 

view  "  on  the  subject.  The  critic's  words  suggest  some  Umita- 
tion  of  outlook  in  Xenophon,  as  if  the  view  were  outgrown. 
It  was  the  view  to  which  Aristotle  recurred ;  affection,  he 
said,  would  be  "  watery  "  in  that  Republic  of  Plato's — there 
would  be  no  reason  for  any  so-called  father  there  caring  for  his 
so-caUed  son,  for  "  what  is  common  to  the  greatest  number 
has  the  least  care  bestowed  upon  it "  ;  it  would  be  better 
to  be  somebody's  real  cousin  than  a  son  after  this  fashion  ; 
"  and  there  is  another  point  that  we  must  not  ignore,  that 
long  time  and  the  experience  of  years  deserves  attention."  ^ 
On  this  last  reflection  a  famous  German  scholar  cries  out  as 
being  "  somewhat  rhetorical,"  as  being  "  the  standing  and 
staple  argument  of  all  conservative  minds  against  subversive 
innovations  —  an  argument  which  appeals  to  us,  with  our 
greatly  extended  ethnographic  and  historical  perspective, 
far  less  forcibly  than  to  past  generations."  ^  Yes,  but  here 
the  ethnographic  and  historical  perspective  more  and  more 
confirms  Xenophon  and  Aristotle  as  the  marriage  customs 
and  experience  of  races  and  ages  are  made  known  to  us. 
How  much  better  indeed  to  be  even  a  cousin  of  somebody 
than  hve  in  that  loveless  machine-made  hell  of  a  Republic  ! 
How  much  better,  Aristotle  suggests  in  his  Ethics,  to  be  the 
real  husband  or  wife  of  somebody !  "  Friendship  {jiCKla) 
between  man  and  woman  seems  estabhshed  in  nature  ;  for 
man  by  nature  is  more  apt  to  form  such  a  union  of  two  than  a 
state,  for  a  household  comes  before  a  state  and  is  more  funda- 
mental ;  while  procreation  is  a  faculty  shared  with  the  animals. 
With  all  other  beings  this  is  the  limit  of  their  association. 
Human  beings  hve  together  not  only  for  the  production  of 
children,  but  for  all  the  purposes  of  life.  As  soon  as  man 
and  woman  unite,  a  distribution  of  functions  (or  tasks  epya) 
takes  place  ;  some  are  proper  to  the  man,  some  to  the  woman  ; 
hence  they  help  each  other,  each  contributing  their  own  gifts. 
Thus  it  is  that  use  and  pleasure  are  both  found  in  this  friend- 

1  These  sentences  come  from  the  Politics,  ii.,  between  pp.  1261  6 
and  1264  a;  in  order  from  c.  4,  7  ;  c.  3,  4  ;  c.  3,  7  ;  c.  5, 
16. 

^  Gomperz,  Greek  Thinkers,  iii.  120.  It  is  curious  how  to  some 
minds  rfjv  STpvfcoSwpou  Qparrav  KaTayiyapTia-ai  suggests  progress  and 
emancipation. 


352  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

ship  .  .  .  and    children    are    an   additional  bond  of    union 
between  them."  ^ 

All  this  is  very  useful  and  philosophical,  it  may  be  said, 
but  to-day  we  look  for  more  enthusiasm,  more  passion,  in  these 
things — some  element  of  romance  ;  we  find  it  in  Euripides  ; 
Ischomachus  seems  too  well  balanced  for  a  modem  lover. 
Perhaps  modern  lovers  could  do  with  more  balance.  But  this 
element  of  romance  appears  with  surprising  power  in  another 
work  of  Xenophon's,  which  was  read  a  great  deal  more  between 
the  Renaissance  and  the  French  Revolution  than  it  is  to-day. 
The  heroines  of  the  Cyropaedeia  are  married  women — pre- 
sumably married  with  as  little  personal  choice  as  the  wife  of 
Ischomachus.  Cyrus  warns  his  young  Median  friend  Araspas 
that  fire  and  passion  are  not  things  to  play  with  ;  ^  Araspas 
believes  love  to  be  voluntary  ;  a  matter  of  choice,  of  the  will 
— and  he  finds  somehow  that  he  has  no  choice  ;  Pantheia  is 
so  beautiful  and  so  gracious.^  But  Pantheia's  love  and  passion 
are  all  for  Abradatas,  her  husband,  absent  or  present,  living  or 
dead.  And  we  seem  to  be  in  the  presence  of  one  of  Homer's 
women,  beautiful,  loyal,  and  womanly — till  she  slays  herself 
over  Abradatas'  body,  and  we  realize  that  we  are  in  the  age  of 
Euripides.  Till  one  knows  the  love  story  of  Abradatas  and 
Pantheia,  it  is  premature  to  say  that  Xenophon  does  not 
understand  passion.  One  of  the  surprising  things  about  him 
is  the  number  of  fields  of  literature  where  he  is  a  pioneer,  and 
perhaps  no  one  would  have  guessed  that  the  author  of  the 
Anabasis  would  give  Greece  perhaps  its  first,  and  perhaps  also 
its  best,  romance.  Nor  is  Pantheia  the  only  lady  of  romance 
in  his  pages.  "  So  when  they  got  home,"  we  read,  "  they 
talked  of  Cyrus — one  of  his  wisdom,  another  of  his  endurance, 
of  his  gentleness  another,  and  there  was  one  who  spoke  of 
his  beauty  and  his  height.  And  then  Tigranes  asked  his  wife  : 
What  do  you  say,  Armenia,  did  you  think  him  beautiful  ? 
No,  by  Zeus,  she  said,  I  wasn't  looking  at  him.  Not  at  Cyrus  ? 
he  said  ;  at  whom  then  ?  At  him,  she  said,  who  offered  his 
own  life  to  save  me  from  slavery ;  "  and  that  was  Tigranes.* 
In  the  Symposium,^  too,  we  read  of  passionate  attachment 
between  the  Homeric  enthusiast,  Niceratos,  and  his  wife — per- 

1  Ethics,  viii.  12,  7,  p.  1161  a.  ^  Cyrop.  vii.  i,  4-17. 

3  Cyrop.  vii.  i,  18.         *  Cyrop.  iii.  i,  41.         ^  Symp.  8,  3. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  353 

haps  that  Homeric  education,  of  which  we  heard,  did  make 
a  kalos  kdgathos  of  a  man  on  this  side  of  Hfe,  too.  Cyrus 
himself,  in  the  story — a  deviation  of  some  significance  perhaps 
from  Persian  practice — has  only  one  wife,  his  cousin — "  she 
whom  you  often  carried  in  your  arms,  when  you  were  a  boy 
in  our  house  ;  and  whenever  anyone  asked  her  whom  she 
would  marry,  it  was  always  Cyrus  "  ^ — and  she  herself  crowns 
him,  a  scene  almost  mediaeval  in  tone.^ 

The  Greeks  were  quite  frank  in  stating  that  the  object  of 
marriage  ^ — though,  Aristotle  says,  not  the  only  one — is  the 
production  of  children.  Xenophon  himself  is  our  authority 
for  the  remarkable  usages  of  Sparta  in  this  matter — the  re- 
laxation of  monogamy  between  friends  in  order  to  the  pro 
creation  of  big  and  healthy  children  ;  but  what  he  thought  of 
it  seems  indicated  in  his  conclusion.  "  About  the  productipn 
of  children  such  was  the  legislation  of  Lycurgus,  the  very  anti- 
thesis of  all  other  peoples,  and  whether  it  has  produced  for 
Sparta  men  of  greater  height  and  greater  strength,  let  him  who 
will  inquire  for  himself."  Much  as  he  admired  Spartan 
discipline,  it  looks  as  if  he  was  critical  at  this  point.  His  own 
feeling  is  shown  in  the  words  he  attributes  to  Socrates,  when 
the  old  man  is  explaining  to  his  son  how  much  a  home  owes 
to  the  mother — on  the  care  a  man  takes  of  his  pregnant  wife 
who  is  carrying  his  children,  and  the  forethought  he  exercises 
for  the  unborn,  and  on  the  mother's  weariness  and  risk  of 
life,  on  her  care  of  the  baby  when  it  comes,  not  because  of  any 
good  it  has  done  her,  not  as  if  it  knew  who  its  friend  was  or 
could  say  what  it  wanted  ;  she  has  to  guess  herself  what  will 
help  it  and  please  it,  and  so  the  labour  of  years  begins  and 
goes  on  without  any  knowledge  that  there  will  be  any  return 
for  it.  "  And  how  much  annoyance  do  you  think  you  have 
given  her  from  babyhood  up,  in  voice  and  actions,  and  peevish- 
ness ?  and  how  much  pain,  too,  when  you  have  been  sick  ?  "  * 
The  man  who  writes  in  this  way  knows — and  it  is  only  ex- 
perience that  gives  the  knowledge — the  value  of  family  life. 
Even  if  he  is  didactic,  it  is  clear  that  he  has  learnt  from  his  wife, 

1  Cyrop.  viii.  5,  19.         ^  Cf .  H6mardinquer,  La  CyropMie,  p.  126. 
^Aristotle,  Pol.  vii.  i6,  5-10,  p.  1335a,  on  the  ages  within  which 
men  and  women  are  best  adapted  to  this  end, 
*  Mem.  ii.  2,  5-7, 
25 


354  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  found  that  she  has  lessons  to  teach  him  that  outweigh 
some  of  Plato's.  The  house  at  Scillus  shows  a  side  of  Greek 
life  and  character  not  much  emphasized  in  the  books  ancient 
or  modern,  yet  full  of  significance.  Homes  were  homes,  even 
if  Pericles  and  Aristophanes  emphasized  other  things  than 
mere  affection  of  married  people  and  their  commonplace 
interest  in  the  new  baby.  Plutarch  in  a  later  day  shows  us 
Greek  life  at  Chaeroneia,  and  Dio  Chrysostom  among  the 
squatters  on  Euboea,  very  much  from  the  same  angle  as 
Xenophon. 

The  wife  of   Ischomachus  only  appears,  we  have  to  re- 
member, in  the  fragments  of  her  conversation  which  her  hus- 
band quotes  to  Socrates,  but  it  is  possible  to  see  some  char- 
acter in  her.     If  she  was  very  carefully  screened  from  the 
world  in  her  mother's  home,  it  would  seem  she  learnt  no  evil 
there — she  is  pure  and  gentle  and  kind-hearted.     She  answers 
her  husband  now  and  again  with  spirit — and  it  delights  him. 
She  makes  him  think  well  of  women.     She  told  him  he  was 
wrong  if  he  supposed  he  was  laying  a  task  on  her  in  giving  her 
charge  of  the  household — not  to  have  such  a  charge  would 
trouble  her  more.     "  I  suppose,"  he  says  to  Socrates,  "  it 
comes  naturally  to  a  good  woman  to  prefer  to  take  care  of  her 
children  rather  than  neglect  them,  and  in  the  same  way  to  take 
care  of  possessions  too,  whose  charm  lies  in  their  being  one's 
own."  1    When,  as  a  young  Greek  girl  might,  she  got  herself 
up  with  powder  and  rouge  and  high  heels,  a  few  words  from 
him  led  her  to  see  there  was  a  kind  of  falsity  in  it ;  and,  seeing 
in  a  flash  what  it  was  she  liked  in  him,  she  was  done  with 
such  vanities  for  ever.^    After  this  it  is  amazing  to  find  the 
great  Cyrus  tolerant  of  drugs  to  make  the  eye  bright  and 
other  little    devices    to    improve    the    complexion.^      That 
Napoleon  III  used  rouge  at  Sedan  with  a  purpose  is  another 
thing.     The  little  wife,  however,  ventured  to  ask  Ischomachus 
if  he  could  suggest  anything  to  improve  her  looks,*  and  he 
suggested  activity  in  all  her  duties  ;   it  would  mean  appetite, 
and  thence  would  come  health  and  good  complexion.     A  life 
of  sitting  still  in  dignity  was  fatal  to  good  looks.  ^ 

1  Oecon.  9,  18-19.  ^  Oecon.  10,  2-8. 

^  Cyrop.  viii.  i,  41.  *  Oecon.  10,  9. 

^  Croiset,  Xenophon,  p.  176,  says  the  passage  reminds  the  reader  of 


COUNTRY  LIFE  355 

The  chapter  on  tidiness,  one  feels,  takes  the  reader  right 
into  the  household  at  Scillus.  Ischomachus,  we  read,  came 
home  and  asked  for  something  or  other,  and  his  wife  blushed 
all  over  and  was  evidently  troubled.  She  did  not  know 
where  it  was.  So  a  discourse  follows,  which,  we  may  be  sure, 
was  often  heard  at  Scillus  on  the  advantages  of  order.  Think 
of  a  chorus  and  what  order  means  there — or  an  army,  and 
Ischomachus  is  quite  carried  away,  till  if  dates  allowed  we 
could  believe  he  had  travelled  with  the  Ten  Thousand  himself 
— hoplites  all  in  rank,  cavalry,  light-armed,  bowmen,  slingers — 
tens  of  thousands  of  them  all  in  rank,  advancing  in  silence 
— or  a  ship  of  war,  and  this  sets  Ischomachus  off  on  another 
series  of  reminiscences  of  the  great  Phoenician  merchant  ship 
in  the  most  incredible  good  order,  with  everything  conceivable 
that  a  ship  would  want  stowed  with  consummate  neatness 
in  the  smallest  possible  compass,  and  the  steersman's  mate 
knew  where  every  single  thing  was,  could  lay  his  hand  on  it 
in  an  instant,  as  easily  as  you  could  spell  Socrates,  and  would 
refresh  his  memory  by  inspection  to  see  that  all  was  handy — 
"  for,  when  God  sends  a  tempest,  you  can't  go  looking  for 
things.  God  threatens  and  chastens  stupid  people."  Yes, 
he  told  his  wife  all  about  the  ship  and  enforced  the  lesson — 
"  how  beautiful  it  looks  " — let  us  pause  to  recall  what  we 
know  of  the  great  word  kalos  and  all  it  carries  of  beauty  and 
moral  worth  and  grandeur — "  how  beautiful  it  looks  when 
the  boots  and  shoes  are  all  set  out  in  order,  whatever  size 
and  shape  they  are."  And  with  this  inimitable  and  character- 
istic sentence  we  may  perhaps  leave  the  training  of  the  wife 
of  Ischomachus,  for  it  was,  as  we  know,  successful.  Perhaps 
it  is  easier  to  train  a  paper  wife  than  a  real  one.  At  least, 
it  has  been  said  that  the  beauty  of  people  in  books  is  that 
you  can  shut  the  book,  and  people  in  books  can  be  very 
charming  and  obliging. 

If  we  smile  now  and  then  as  we  listen  to  Ischomachus, 
we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  value  of  the  book.  Life  might 
be  very  hard  for  a  little  Athenian  wife,  and  Xenophon  urged 
that  by  kindness  and  courtesy  and  good-humour  a  husband 
could  do  a  great  deal  to  win  that  love  and  confidence  which 

those  statues  of  Pheidias  in  whose  remains  even  yet  "  life  and  strength 
shine  with  sovereign  beauty." 


356  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

make  a  marriage  happy.  No  doubt  tidiness  helps  in  this, 
but  then  it  is  only  one  aspect  of  that  consideration  for  others, 
which  Xenophon  says  Socrates  always  taught,  and  which  he 
preaches  himself  on  many  a  pleasant  page. 

Of  Xenophon's  own  wife  we  only  know  what  Diogenes 
Laertius  quotes  from  Demetrius  of  Magnesia,  and  it  is  a 
curious  sentence.  When  Xenophon  went  to  Scillus  "  there 
followed  him — or  went  with  him — a  wife  too,  called  Philesia."  ^ 
The  verb  is  peculiar — it  may  imply  that  she  came  from  Asia  ; 
and  the  noun  is  odd — ^vvaiov.  The  word  is  used  in  Attic 
affectionately  and  contemptuously — in  Aristophanes  it  might 
be  both — "  wifie."  If  she  was  a  foreigner,  Xenophon  could 
not  have  contracted  a  legal  Athenian  marriage  with  her,  which 
might  perhaps  help  to  explain  why  he  settled  in  Corinth  after 
471.  It  suggests  a  question,  too,  of  wide  bearing  :  By  what 
law  or  laws  were  those  increasingly  numerous  Greeks  married 
whom  we  find  in  every  city  of  the  Mediterranean  and  of  the 
kingdoms  of  Alexander's  successors  ?  Marriage  laws  must  have 
differed  endlessly  in  the  old  Greek  cities  ;  what  form  did  the 
general  "  law  of  Nature  "  take  in  the  new  foundations  ? 

When  we  come  to  Xenophon's  sons  we  seem  to  be  on 
firmer  ground.  ^  They  were  two,  and  apparently  twins,  for 
they  were  called  the  Dioscuri.  ^  One  of  them  lived  to  serve 
and  fall  in  the  Athenian  ranks  at  Mantineia  in  362.  This 
was  Gryllos,  and  his  gallant  death  and  his  father's  name 
called  attention  to  him,  and  Aristotle  is  quoted  as  the  authority 
for  the  fact  that  very  many  men  wrote  encomiums  and  epitaphs 
on  him — "  partly  for  his  father's  sake,"  a  clause  which  it  is 
pleasant  to  read.  The  other  son,  Diodorus,  was  less  dis- 
tinguished ;  in  later  days  he  had  a  son  called  Xenophon 
whose  sole  distinction,  a  slight  one,  seems  to  have  been  that 
he  was  prosecuted  on  some  charge  or  other  by  somebody. 

No  one  can  doubt  that  Xenophon  must  have  rejoiced  in 
having  sons.  At  all  events,  no  Greek  writer,  who  has  reached 
us,  took  such  trouble  or  showed  such  sympathy  in  drawing 

1  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  8,  §  52. 

2  On  this,  Diogenes  Laertius,  ii.  6,  8-10,  §§  52-55. 

^  The  name  Diodorus  makes  this  almost  certain — at  least  for  those 
who  know  the  evidence  on  twin  cults  and  practices  relative  to  twins, 
collected  by  Dr.  Rendel  Harris. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  357 

the  character  of  a  natural  boy.  There  is  nothing  in  Greek 
literature  that  approaches  the  boy  Cyrus  in  the  first  book  of 
the  Cyropaedeia  ;  the  only  thing  like  it  is  the  actual  letter 
of  a  boy,  Theon,  found  of  late  years  among  papyri.^  Cyrus 
is  drawn  as  a  manly,  natural  little  fellow — full  of  spirit  and 
observation  and  friendliness,  quite  at  home  with  people  and 
modest  too — "  perhaps  he  was  a  bit  of  a  chatterbox,"  adds 
Xenophon,  and  explains  that  as  partly  due  to  his  education — 
for  he  had  to  be  ready  to  give  a  reason  for  whatever  he  did — 
and  he  was  keen  on  understanding  things,  and  used  to  ask 
questions.  He  was  a  shrewd  little  lad,  and  always  ready  with 
an  answer.  "  But  all  his  chattering  left  the  impression  not 
of  forwardness,  but  of  simplicity  and  warm-heartedness,  so 
that  one  would  sooner  listen  to  him  than  sit  and  have  him 
silent."  The  man  who  wrote  that  passage  evidently  loved 
boys,  and  as  evidently  meant  to  bring  Socratic  principles  into 
the  education  of  his  own. 

We  are  told  that  Agesilaos  suggested  he  should  send  his 
boys  to  Sparta  to  be  trained,  ^  and  he  clearly  liked  many 
features  in  the  Spartan  training.  The  boys  grew  up  manly 
and  modest,  they  knew  how  to  behave  in  the  streets,  their 
whole  deportment  spoke  of  discipUne — and  it  showed  that 
the  male  sex  is  as  capable  as  the  female,  more  capable  in  fact, 
of  sobriety  and  quietness,  for  here  were  boys  whom  you  found 
more  bashful  than  girls  ^ — and  yet  physically  hard  and  fit — 
quite  unlike  the  impudent  young  Athenians  whom  Isocrates 
describes.*  Probably  Xenophon  had  reasons  for  keeping  his 
boys  near  him  which  he  did  not  tell  Agesilaos.  An  exile  was 
always  and  everywhere  an  exile  ;  nothing  had  the  stamp  of 
permanence  on  it  in  Greece  at  that  time  ;  and  as  the  seaman 
said  to  Ischomachus,  "  You  can't  go  looking  for  things  in  a 
storm."  The  storm  broke  in  371,  and  Xenophon  hurried  his 
sons,  with  a  few  slaves,  off  to  Lepreon  southward,  escaping 

1  G.  Milligan,  Selections  from  the  Greek  Papyri,  No.  42,  from  Grenfell 
and  Hunt,  Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  i.  p.  185  f. ;  and  Deissmann,  Light  from 
the  Ancient  East. 

2  Pint.  Agesilaus,  20.  ^  Lac.  Resp.  3,  4-5. 

*  Isocrates,  Areop.  48-49.  On  the  other  hand,  Isocrates  notices 
that  the  Spartans  are  so  wanting  in  education  and  culture  (cf)iKo(ro(f)Las) 
that  they  do  not  even  learn  their  letters  [Panath.  209).  The  author  of 
Hippias  Major,  285  c,  says  not  many  of  them  can  count,  ay  eiros  elireiv. 


358  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

himself  northward  to  EUs,  and  joining  them  at  Lepreon  as 
soon  as  he  could  ;  and  then,  as  we  saw,  they  all  got  off  to 
Corinth. 

Discipline,  order,  and  the  Socratic  method  were  the  founda- 
tions of  the  upbringing  his  boys  had,  of  that  we  may  be  sure — 
and  hunting.  Xenophon  believed  that  training  is  the  secret 
of  sound  mind  and  sound  body — aaKeiv  is  his  word.^  All 
that  is  honourable  or  good  in  a  man  depends  on  practice — 
aa-KTjra — self-control  [aax^poavvrj)  most  of  all.  He  believed 
with  Theognis,  a  rather  old-fashioned  and  aristocratic  poet :  ^ 

Good  from  the  good  thou'lt  learn  ;    but  comrades  base 
What  sense  thou  hast,  are  certain  to  efface. 

Could  courage  be  taught  ?  Here  he  falls  back  on  Socrates. 
Socrates,  he  says,  recognized  great  differences  of  natural  endow- 
ment in  regard  to  courage,  but  held  that  here  also  training  tells. 
The  Macedonians  a  generation  later  bore  down  the  Greeks — a 
nation  of  hunters  triumphant  over  a  race  of  athletes.  Xeno- 
phon's  passion  for  hunting  was  no  doubt  helped  by  his  recogni- 
tion of  the  training  that  hunting  in  the  wild  carried  with  it — 
observation,  patience,  cunning,  the  gift  of  knowing  your  quarry 
and  its  ways  and  nature,  unflagging  energy,  and  interest 
always  alert.  As  we  have  seen,  his  boys  hunted — and  "  men 
who  wished  hunted  with  them  "  ^  ;  one  man,  for  certain,  we  can 
guess.  "  Even  when  I  was  a  little  boy,"  says  Pheraulas,  a 
Persian  of  the  people,^  "  I  would  snatch  up  a  hunting-knife 
whenever  I  saw  one  ;  and  it  was  nobody,  but  just  nature,  I 
maintain,  that  taught  me  how  to  hold  it.  I  wasn't  taught 
to  do  it  ;  they  used  to  try  to  prevent  me  ;  but  it  was  like  some 
other  things  that  nature  set  me  doing,  in  spite  of  my  father  and 
mother.  By  Zeus,  I  used  to  hack  with  that  knife — everything 
I  could  get  a  chance  at.  It  wasn't  merely  natural,  like  walking 
and  running — it  was  fun,  splendid  fun  I  thought  it."  The 
parents,  of  course,  were  on  the  side  of  safety,  but  one  of  them 
had  a  quiet  satisfaction  of  his  own  when  he  caught  Gryllos 
with  the  hunting-knife  ;  he  must  put  it  down,  of  course ;  but — 
he'll  make  a  hunter.  And  he  did.  And  if,  like  Pheraulas,  the 
boy  had  a  natural  handiness  with  his  fists — they  need  not  always 

^  Mem.  i.  2,  19,  and  23.  ^  Theognis,  35,  T)^. 

3  Anab.  v.  3,  10.  *  Cyrop.  ii.  3,  7-10. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  359 

be  used  on  Diodorus.  This  seems  to  be  brought  out  by  a 
chapter  in  the  Memorabilia,  where  two  brothers  (with  twin-like 
names)  disagree,  and  Socrates  talks  to  one  of  them  about 
friendship  between  brothers — you  two  are  like  a  pair  of  hands 
made  by  God  to  help  each  other  ;  and  two  brothers  are  a  much 
more  useful  pair  than  a  pair  of  hands  or  a  pair  of  eyes.^  Brothers 
must  be  special  friends.  Probably  the  family  knew  this  story 
well,  and  the  other  story  about  Socrates  teaching  his  son  to  be 
gentle  with  his  mother  2 — "  even  if  her  tongue  did  make  you 
wish  yourself  dead."  Manners,  too,  were  watched — Socrates 
had  spoken  of  table  manners  from  time  to  time,  of  the  con- 
sideration that  is  due  to  others  in  this  matter,  of  tolerance  for 
bad  manners  in  others,  of  the  art  of  putting  up  with  things — 
"  just  think  that  you  are  perhaps  harder  to  please  than  the 
slaves."  Xenophon,  like  Alexander  after  him,  was  impressed 
with  the  manners  and  breeding  of  the  Persian  gentleman,  and 
recommended  them  with  an  explicitness  that  moves  a  smile. ^ 
With  all  this  we  have  to  remember  that  the  grave,  stately,  and 
strict  father,  with  all  his  stories  of  Socrates,  could  tell  other 
stories  —  nobody  like  him  —  thrilling  stories  of  battle  and 
adventure,  such  as  made  Plutarch  centuries  later  say  that  he 
all  but  shows  you  the  actual  thing,  till  you  feel  you  are  in  the 
thick  of  it,  your  heart  beating,  sharing  the  danger,  so  vivid  it 
all  is.*  And  sometimes  the  tales  gleamed  with  fun,  when  he 
told  of  King  Seuthes  and  his  Thracian  suppers,  or  of  Cyrus  and 
the  butler. 

"  No,"  says  Ischomachus  to  Socrates,  "  I  did  not  begin  to 
teach  my  wife  before  I  sacrificed  and  prayed  that  for  me 
teaching  and  her  taught  all  might  turn  out  for  the  best." 
"  And  did  your  wife  join  with  you  in  these  sacrifices  and 
prayers  ?  "  "  Why,  yes  ;  she  did,  with  many  a  prayer  to  the 
gods  that  she  might  become  what  she  ought  to  be."  ^  These 
simple  sentences  show  how  that  piety,  shown  by  Xenophon 
in  every  emergency  on  the  march  through  Asia,  finds  a  place  in 
the  more  ordinary  and  everyday  affairs  of  Scillus.    The  Memo- 

1  Mem.  ii.  3,  1-19.     Cf.  also  Cyrop.  viii.  7,  14-16. 

2  Mem.  ii.  2,  1-14. 

^  Cyrop.  V.  2,  17;  and  viii.  i,  42,  on  spitting,  blowing  the  nose, 
staring. 

*  Plut.  Artax.  8,  on  Cunaxa.  ^  Oecon.  7,  7-8. 


36o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

rabilia  are  full  of  the  same  thought  of  the  goodness  and  kindness 
of  the  gods  and  man's  duty  to  wait  on  them.  In  Xenophon's 
story  of  the  greater  Cyrus,  it  has  been  pointed  out,  thei'e  is  no 
jealous  Nemesis  waiting  to  crush  greatness  because  it  is  great.^ 
Cyrus  is  loyal  to  heaven,  and  heaven  is  loyal  to  him — that  is 
all.  It  is  a  simple  faith,  and  one  which  has  made  men  great. 
Xenophon  will  go  to  the  gods  in  the  gr^at  perplexities  of  the 
march,  and  in  the  little  affairs  of  crops  and  cattle.^  He  would 
not  have  been  so  hard  upon  "  the  noble  Hesiod  "  as  some  of 
his  fellow-students  were,  according  to  Plato  in  the  Republic  ;  ^ 
it  would  have  seemed  quite  natural  to  him  that  bees  and  sheep 
and  other  blessings  should  be  multiplied  to  the  righteous,  and 
he  believed  he  had  Socrates  with  him  in  this  conviction. 
Shallow  natures  hold  this  faith,  but  they  sometimes  lose  it 
when  Eleians  recapture  Scillus  ;  deeper  ones  have  held  it,  too, 
and  not  lost  it.  And  when  it  comes  to  the  last  and  greatest 
difficulty  of  all,  "  for  my  part,  my  sons,  I  have  never  yet  been 
persuaded  that  the  soul,  so  long  as  it  is  in  a  mortal  body,  lives, 
and  when  it  leaves  it,  dies ;  for  I  see  that  it  is  the  presence  of  the 
soul  within  them  that  makes  these  mortal  bodies  live.  Nor 
could  anyone  ever  persuade  me  that  the  soul  loses  sense  when 
it  leaves  the  senseless  body  ;  no,  but  when  it  is  let  loose,  un- 
mingled  and  pure,  I  think  it  must  be  then  that  it  reaches  its 
highest  wisdom.  .  .  .  Even  if  it  is  not  so,  if  the  soul  lingers 
and  dies  with  the  body,  yet  fear  the  gods  who  abide  for  ever, 
who  see  all,  whose  is  all  power,  who  uphold  this  universe 
undiminished,  ageless,  unerring,  unspeakable  for  its  beauty 
and  grandeur — fear  them  and  do  nothing  impious  or  un- 
holy, no,  nor  think  it.  And  after  the  gods,  respect  mankind, 
the  whole  race  of  men  new  every  generation.  ...  I  have  been 
a  lover  of  men  all  my  life."  So  says  the  dying  Cyrus,  and  the 
thoughts  are  Xenophon's. 

The  Greek  household,  beside  parents  and  children,  con- 
tained slaves,  and  they  might  be  many.  We  are  told  that  a 
Spartan  friend  sent  Xenophon  a  lot  of  captives  from  Dardanus, 
when  he  was  settled  at  Scillus.  Ischomachus  accordingly 
has  a  good  deal  to  say  about  them.  They  shirked,  stole,  drank, 
and  struck  up  irregular  unions.  One  of  the  wife's  duties  was 
to  see  "  that  the  slaves  do  not  breed  without  our  leave,"  though 
^  Hemardinquer,  La  Cyropidie,  286,     ^  Oecon.  5,  20.      ^  Rep.  ii.  363 a. 


COUNTRY  LIFE  361 

Ischomachus  (like  Aristotle  later  on)  saw  that  to  have  children 
of  their  own  made  good  slaves  more  loyal  at  once.^  That  is  his 
line  throughout — treat  the  slave  like  a  human  being,  teach 
him — if  you  can  teach  dogs  to  fetch  and  carry  and  turn  somer- 
saults, you  can  teach  men  and  women — trust  him  and  be  good 
to  him,  and  let  him  see  that  you  are  just,  and  he  will  be  your 
friend  and  play  fair  by  you.^  The  same  discovery  was  made 
by  some  masters  of  negroes  in  the  Southern  States  in  days 
before  the  war,  who  said  they  never  had  trouble  with  their 
negroes,  and  that  they  did  not  run  away.^  Slavery,  as  Homer 
and  Euripides  saw,  kills  personality,  but  Ischomachus  saw  that 
it  paid  to  keep  it  alive,  even  if  kindliness  were  not  a  motive  with 
him.  This  gives  a  strange  look  to  the  defence  of  the  eunuch 
system  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  great  Cyrus,*  who  in  this  case 
for  once  treats  men  simply  as  tools.  It  is  not  quite  in  character, 
but  the  passage  may  be  an  apology  for  an  Oriental  practice, 
which  the  Greeks  did  not  like,  and  which  they  might  think 
a  blot  on  the  hero's  nature.  The  defence  fails  and  rather 
emphasizes  the  blot.  Ischomachus  is  a  great  deal  shrewder 
and  more  humane. 

A  large  part  of  the  Oeconomicus  is  taken  up  with  farming — 
clearly  a  theme  in  which  Xenophon  was  interested  deeply, 
but  here  we  need  not  perhaps  follow  him.  It  will  be  more 
interesting  to  ask  what  library  he  had  at  Scillus,  for  it  is  plain 
that  he  read  a  great  deal  in  his  years  there  and  at  Corinth — 
and  not  merely  old  books,  but  new  ones.  For  it  has  been  brought 
out  that  he  read  Plato's  dialogues  as  they  appeared  ;  he  knew 
more  or  less  what  Antisthenes  was  doing  in  books;  and  he 
read  and  studied  Isocrates.  Isocrates  and  he  had  belonged 
to  the  same  deme,  they  were  about  the  same  age,  and  they 
may  have  known  each  other  as  boys.  Their  tastes  were  widely 
different — one  can  hardly  imagine  Isocrates  hunting  or  riding 
over  a  farm — still  less  among  the  Kurds  and  the  snow.  But 
Xenophon,  it  has  been  noticed,  is  curiously  susceptible  to 
style,  and  when  Isocrates  in  373  struck  out  a  new  path  in 
literature  with  his  Evagoras,  Xenophon  realized  its  significance, 

^  Oecon.  9,  5.     Cf.  Aristotle,  Oecon.  i.  5. 
2  Oecon.  chapters  12  to  14  generally. 
®  Booker  Washington,  Story  of  the  Negro. 
*  Cyrop.  vii.  5,  60-65. 


362  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

and  traces  of  its  influence  have  been  noticed  in  others  of  his 
books  and  not  in  the  Agesilaos  alone.  Of  the  many  books 
he  wrote,  constant  use  has  been  made  in  this  and  the  preceding 
chapters.  The  fashion  in  education  has  taken  us  elsewhere 
to-day,  not  always  to  our  advantage.  If  what  has  been 
written  here  will  send  any  reader  back  to  Xenophon's  own 
pages,  he  will  find  what  we  have  lost  by  neglecting  one  of  the 
strongest,  sanest,  most  wholesome,  and  delightful  writers  of 
ancient  Greece. 


CHAPTER    XII 
UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ? 

THERE  are  points  in  history  where  Imagination  loves 
to  rest — great  battles  that  alter  the  face  of  the  world 
or  turn  for  ever  the  current  of  mankind's  thinking — 
great  discoveries  like  those  of  Columbus  and  his  contemporaries 
which  change  every  factor  in  human  affairs  by  bringing  in 
new  ones  of  vaster  scope — great  men  who  sum  up  a  nation's 
life  or  the  spirit  of  a  people  and  an  epoch  in  themselves,  or, 
by  the  questions  they  raise,  or  the  forces  of  personality  which 
they  liberate  or  evoke,  give  humanity  new  outlook  and  new 
insight.  In  the  story  of  the  Greek  race  three  moments  stand 
out — one  a  battle  of  a  few  hours  fought  and  won  at  Salamis, 
the  second  the  fifteen  years  of  the  rule  of  Pericles,  the  third 
the  short  reign  of  Alexander — and  all  of  them  fall  within  the 
brief  period  of  a  hundred  and  sixty  years.  Pericles  and 
Alexander  are  names  that  stand  for  ideas  utterly  divergent, 
and  two  generations  span  the  interval  between  the  men. 

Every  age  is  an  age  of  transition,  but  somehow  in  few  does 
the  transition  seem  so  swift  and  so  complete  as  here.  We 
pass  to  a  new  world,  with  wider  horizons  than  men  ever  dreamed 
could  be.  Every  value  we  have  learnt  in  politics,  in  philo- 
sophy, in  religion,  in  everything,  is  revised,  and  often,  it  would 
seem,  inverted.  Democracy  loses  its  empire  and  is  relegated, 
like  a  disgraced  pasha  in  modern  Turkey,  to  the  control  of  a 
parish.  Monarchy  and  chivalry  are  in  the  ascendant,  and 
never  more  brilliant.  New  cities  rise,  which,  without  knowing 
it,  negate  everything  it  was  supposed  a  city  should  be.  The 
great  philosophers  are  still  busy  with  their  ideal  states,  which 
are  now  further  from  realization  than  the  Bird  City  of  Aristo- 
phanes ;  and  mankind  turns  for  practical  guidance  to  other 
teachers  who  care  little  for  the  state  and  a  great  deal  for  the 

universe  and   the  individual.     In   religion,  disguised  mono- 

363 


364  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

theisms  begin  to  capture  the  minds  of  serious  men  with  a  new 
appeal ;  and  the  old  cults  of  the  city-gods  survive  for  old  ac- 
quaintance' sake,  and  interest  not  the  pious  but  the  antiquaries. 
All  this  in  a  century  !  Sparta  launched  war  upon  the  Greek 
world  to  win  the  freedom  of  every  Greek  town  and  city  ;  she 
crushed  Athens  and  carried  off  a  victory  she  little  deserved  ; 
and  in  half  a  century  all  Greece  is  controlled  by  kings,  and  all 
the  freedom  the  cities  in  general  keep  is  to  plan  their  streets 
and  mismanage  their  finances.  Where  the  city  is  built  round 
a  fortress,  it  is  a  different  story,  chequered  with  uneven  dashes 
of  freedom  and  slavery.  To  this  end  had  autopolitanism,  if 
such  a  word  may  be  developed, — the  passionate  demand  for 
local  independence  to  the  utmost, — ^brought  its  votaries. 

The  war-cry  with  which  a  nation  embarks  upon  a  war  may 
have  little  relation  to  the  facts  of  the  world  ;  it  may  be  a  mere 
chimera,  a  madness — like  that  "  passion  "  that  sent  Athens 
to  Sicily — or  a  fancy  fetched  from  a  dead-and-gone  past — or  a 
catchword  without  real  meaning  but  with  an  appeal,  ready 
and  compulsive,  for  those  who  do  not  think.  Did  Sparta  ever 
mean  to  make  all  Greeks  "  citizens  of  themselves,"  every 
Greek  city  a  law  to  itself  ?  The  smaller  cities  thought  so, 
hoped  so,  and  fought  to  win  this  freedom.  But  Salamis  long 
before  had  marked  the  close  of  the  era  in  which  their  fancies 
lived.  Fifty  years  and  more  of  the  rule  of  Athens,  years  of 
progress  all  over  the  world,  had  made  impossible  such  a  return 
to  the  days  before  Salamis.  New  ideals,  new  necessities,  new 
nations,  a  new  balance  of  powers  had  come  in,  and  there  could 
be  no  going  back.  The  Peloponnesian  War  altered  much  and 
it  left  problems,  the  first  glance  at  which  would  show  any 
thinking  man  that  the  war-cry  of  the  victors  was  a  cry  for  the 
impossible  and  the  undesirable. 

Three  things  stand  out  in  the  situation  of  the  Greek  peoples 
at  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War.  First  of  all,  there  is 
the  fact  perpetually  emphasized  by  the  commercial  advisers 
of  Athens,  that  Athens  is  in  the  middle  of  the  world.  This 
was  true,  for  the  known  world,  and  the  civilized  world,  now 
extended  almost  as  far  to  the  West,  as  hitherto  to  the  East 
and  to  the  South.  Eighty  years  of  Athenian  trade  Westward, 
forty  or  fifty  years  of  internal  peace  in  Asia  Minor,  the  unity 
of  the  old  empires  of  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt  under  the  peace- 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  365 

ful  control  of  Persia,  must  have  added  in  a  degree  incalculable 
to  us  to  the  population  and  the  wealth  of  the  whole  world,  both 
East  and  West,  but  especially  Westward.  The  historians 
have  chronicled  the  wars  for  us, — short  wars  and  local  wars, 
though  there  were  too  many  of  them, — ^but  have  they 
emphasized  enough  the  significance  to  mankind  of  the  cessation 
of  Assyrian  raiding,  the  opening  and  settlement  of  the  western 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  steady  movements  of 
commerce  over  a  very  great  sea  freer  than  ever  before  from 
pirates  and  vastly  more  familiar  to  mariner  and  pilot  ?  The 
rise  of  great  cities  like  Syracuse  and  Carthage,  Capua  and 
Massilia,  the  trading  energies  of  the  Carthaginian,  the  Etruscan, 
and  the  Greek  on  every  western  shore  with  a  hinterland — every- 
thing points  to  a  new  Western  world  that  must  react  on  the 
Aegaean,  yes,  and  on  the  Euxine,  and  on  the  Levant  generally. 
The  West  grows  richer  and  richer  in  men  and  cities,  industries, 
arts,  and  gold  and  silver.  If  there  had  been  no  changes  what- 
ever in  the  cities  and  islands  of  old  Greece  and  Ionia,  the  re- 
action of  this  great  new  West  must  have  been  felt ;  but  there 
were  great  changes  in  the  ancient  homes  of  the  race. 

In  the  next  place,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  war  left  every.. 
Greek  state  (with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  Thebes)  weaker  in 
many  waj^.  Twenty-seven  years  taken  from  industry  and 
given  to  destruction  did  not  increase  the  national  wealths 
The  losses  of  life  were  enormous,  and  the  loss  of  energy  and 
hope  and  spirit  in  the  peoples  is  hardly  to  be  computed. 
Sparta,  it  might  be  urged,  came  out  of  the  war  stronger — ^she 
gained  empire  and  she  had  amassed  stores  of  gold  ^  so  great 
as  to  make  conservative  Spartans  uneasy.  The  power  of  a 
single  Spartan  had  never  been  greater.^  But  Sparta  had  lost 
men,  and  there  was  no  way  of  replacing  them — she  could  not 
and  she  would  not  adopt  citizens  as  other  states  did,  not  even 
from  among  her  subject  neighbours  the  Perioeci.  There  was 
no  ApoUodorus  class  in  Lacedaemon.  Nor  did  the  captured 
gold  in  the  long  run  add  to  her  strength — it  was  unremunera- 
tive  ;    it  developed  no  industry,  no  commerce.     From  this 

1  Cf .  [Plato]  Alcih.  i.  122  e;  Hi-ppias  Major,  283  d;  Xen.  Lac. 
Rep.  14,  3,  Spartans  once  forbidden  to  own  gold,  now  swaggering  over 
it  ;  Poseidonios,  Frag.  41,  ap.  Athenaeus,  vi.  233  f  ;   Plut.  Lysander,  i8., 

2  Cf.  Isocrates,  Archid.  52,  and  Paneg.  iii ;  and  Xen.  Anab.  vi.  6,  12. 


366  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

time  we  may  date  the  rise  of  the  heiress,  a  new  figure  in  Spartan 
life,  who,  as  later  observers  noticed,^  weakened  the  state  ;  for 
properties  became  massed  in  feminine  hands,  and  Spartan 
men  lost  their  national  status  through  want  of  even  the  little 
needed  to  maintain  their  "  contributions.'^ 

Poverty,  as  we  are  now  learning  to  see,  was  always  a  near 
neighbour  in  a  Greek  state — poverty  that  very  quickly  reached 
the  verge  of  endurance  and  then  took  on  the  most  horrible 
guise.  We  know  in  various  ways  how  it  reached  Sparta,  and 
Isocrates  reiterates  with  emphasis  its  pressure  on  Greek  life 
generally.^  It  was  poverty,  he  insists,  that  drove  men  abroad 
in  shoals  to  find  a  living  in  military  service  with  the  foreigner, 
even  with  the  barbarian.  Lysias  and  Aristophanes  are  wit- 
nesses, as  we  have  seen,  to  the  penury  of  Athens,  of  the  treasury, 
and  the  individual.  Two  men  stand  out  as  advocates  of  the 
plan  that  was  to  solve  many  of  the  difficulties  of  poverty,  but 
it  was  not  till  half-Hellenized  kings  replaced  oligarchies  and 
democracies  that  the  colonial  proposals  of  Xenophon  and 
Isocrates  were  put  into  action,  and  with  success.  But,  in  the 
meantime,  no  state  would  attempt  such  a  plan — ^perhaps  even 
the  means  to  initiate  it  were  wanting.  Xenophon's  Ten 
Thousand  would  rather  kill  him  than  settle  at  the  back  of 
beyond.  Heaven  knows  where,  at  the  far  end  of  the  Euxine. 
Alexander  planted  his  men  on  the  Jaxartes  and  at  the  foot  of 
Hindu  Kush,  and  there  they  had  to  stay. 

Thirdly,  the  war  had  not  made  relations  between  Greek 
states  any  easier.  Even  the  allies  of  Sparta  soon  felt  they 
had  helped  to  win  her  too  complete  a  victory.  Yet  co-opera- 
tion was  more  than  ever  needed,  for  each  state  and  every 
state  was  relatively  smaller  and  weaker  in  a  world  of  larger 
populations  and  greater  wealth.  The  most  serious  call  to  some 
kind  of  united  action  was  the  awakening  of  Persia,  which  after 
forty  years  of  inaction,  content  with  an  agreement  with  Athens, 
had  once  more  intruded  into  Greek  politics  with  a  policy  that 
seemed,  like  many  things  Persian,  shifting  and  uncertain,  but 
was  in  fact  successful  in  bringing  all  the  Greeks  together  "  to 

^Aristotle  {Pol.  ii.  9,  14-15,  12700)  says  nearly  two-fifths  of  the 
country  are  held  by  women. 

2  Isocrates,  Paneg.  168,  174 ;  Archid,  64-68 ;  Letter  to  Archi- 
damos,  8. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  367 

the  gates  of  the  King."  ^  So  we  find  a  weakened  Greece 
struggling  with  poverty  at  home  and  face  to  face  abroad. 
East  and  West,  with  Oriental  powers  conscious  of  new  oppor- 
tunities for  the  subjection  of  the  Hellenic  world. 

These  are  the  great  factors  always  present  in  the  period  from 
404  to  359 — the  growth  of  the  nations  in  population  and 
wealth,  the  decline  of  Greece  in  both,  and  the  heightened 
impossibility  of  concerted  Greek  action.     The  promised  goal 
of  autonomy  for  every  town  was  by  now  an  absurdity  ;  it  was 
still  talked  of,  it  was  put  into  practice,  but  never  for  any  other 
purpose  than  to  weaken  a  rival  power.      The  real  guiding 
principles  of  the  age  are  to  be  looked  for  elsewhere.     Three 
tjTpes  of  government  with  more  than  a  small  local  outlook 
are  to  be  recognized.     There  is,   of  course,   the  Empire  or 
Hegemony  of   a  Greek  city-state.     Sparta  took  it  over  from 
Athens  at  the  end  of  the  war,  and  managed  it  very  badly — 
with  an  amount  of  oppression  and  exasperation  for  everybody 
that  soon  made  enemies  of  all  her  allies.     Athens  tried  to 
revive  the  glories  of  her  old  Confederacy  with  some  accom- 
modation to  the  newer  ideas  of  the  period.     And  then  Thebes 
broke  for  ever  the  power  of  Sparta,   and  introduced  fresh 
elements  of  confusion  everywhere.     One  aspect  of  the  work  of 
Thebes  comes  pleasantly  to  the  modern  student.     Whatever 
her  motive---and  it  was  frankly  the  crippUng  of  Sparta — she 
gave  freedom  to  two  oppressed  nationalities  of  the  Peloponnese, 
the  Arcadians,  and   the  Messenians.      These  liberated  races 
give  us  two  striking  examples  of  another  type  of  government, 
which  was  now  beginning  to  be  tried  in  a  quiet  way  in  a  good 
many  corners  of   Greece,   and  which  had  a  great  future — 
Federalism.     But  so  far  the  federal  governments  of  Greece 
were  weak,  and  the   system  had  a  rival   in  a  new  variety 
of  monarchy.     All  round  the  Greek  world  we  find  kingdoms 
springing  up,  with  a  good  deal  of  actual  power  and  the  promise 
of  more.     The  coming  of  the  Prince  is  heralded  throughout 
the  whole  period  ;   and  with  Philip  he  came — to  rule  till  1776. 
It  is  surprising  to'  a  reader  who  knows  the  fifth-century  litera-  < 
ture  to  find  how  monarchical  the  fourth  century,  apart  from 
the  popular  orators,  has  become.     Away  from  the  bema  no  one 
seems  to  have  had  much  enthusiasm  for    Democracy,  and 
1  Polybius,  vi.  49. 


368  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

perhaps  even  in  an  Athenian  assembly  the  Funeral  Speech  of 
Pericles  would  by  now  have  been  impossible. 

The  problem  was  one  of  leadership.  The  city-state  failed 
to  retain  the  hegemony  of  the  Greek  world  ;  the  federal  league 
hardly  attempted  it ;  and  before  Philip  princely  government 
had  not  so  wide  an  outlook.  But  whatever  the  power  was  to 
be  that  should  unite  the  world,  certain  qualifications,  it  was 
growingly  clear,  were  necessary.  First  of  all,  the  dominant 
power  must  have  a  strong  hold  upon  the  tools  of  war.  War 
was  growing  to  be  every  year  more  of  a  specialist's  business. 
The  fifth  century  hardly  saw  a  successful  siege  of  a  town  of 
any  dimensions ;  Sparta  notoriously  never  attempted  it. 
But  in  the  fourth  century  the  siege  is  a  great  feature  of  war,^ 
and  siege  engines  come  in.  National  levies  in  the  older 
Greece  are  disliked,  and  war  is  carried  on  by  mercenaries. 
In  the  fifth  century  even  Archidamos,  king  of  Sparta,  is  repre- 
sented by  Thucydides  as  saying  that  war  is  not  so  much  an 
affair  of  arms  as  of  finance  ^ — a  saying  borne  out  by  the 
course  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  in  which  victory  was  to 
fall  to  the  power  that  could  longest  keep  up  the  rebuilding 
of  lost  fleets,  and,  till  Persia  stepped  in,  that  power  was  Athens, 
and  afterwards  it  was  Sparta.^  In  the  fourth  century  war 
cost  still  more  money  * — especially  as  the  range  widened 
over  which  it  might  be  carried  on.  It  was  in  Sicily  that  the 
new  features  of  war  first  showed  themselves,  and  Sicily  saw 
the  first  successful  Greek  prince  emerge  from  the  new  con- 
ditions. But  the  great  money  power  of  the  world  was  still 
Persia.  As  early  as  380  Isocrates  laments  that  the  King 
uses  Greek  troops  against  Evagoras.^  A  few  years  later  his 
friend,  the  Athenian  general,  Timotheos,  entered  the  King's 
service,  but  this  was  hardly  unfitting  for  the  son  of  Conon. 

^  The  reader  of  Arrian's  Anabasis  of  Alexander  will  want  no  refer- 
ences for  this  statement. 

2  Thuc.  i.  83,  2. 

3  There  is  a  good  remark  in  Plutarch's  Alcib.  35,  on  the  difficulties  of 
a  general  contending  against  people  with  the  Great  King  as  xopvy^^- 
This  is  just,  even  if  the  King  was  as  slack  as  the  author  of  Hellenica 
Oxyrhynchia  says  (14,  2). 

*  Isocrates  {Evag.  60)  says  Artaxerxes  spent  15,000  talents  on  his 
war  against  Evagoras.     His  satraps  may  have  had  some  of  it. 

*  Isocrates,  Paneg.  135. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  369 

No  one  could  compete  in  wealth  with  the  King  of  Persia,  and 
whatever  was  to  be  bought,  he  could  buy — ships,  soldiers, 
politicians. 

But  as  important  as  wealth  for  the  hegemony  of  the  Greek 
world  was  some  clear,  strong,  and  wide  outlook  in  the  ruler, 
whether  demos,  or  council,  or  prince.  Whoever  was  to  rule 
must  have  enough  political  intelligence  and  insight  to  realize 
the  imity  of  the  world  and  the  other  new  elements  in  the 
situation  before  him.  Most  men  are  limited  in  outlook  and 
intelligence  ;  the  Greeks  were  becoming  very  limited — a 
Nemesis  not  unfamiliar  among  the  sons  of  great  or  successful 
parents.  The  time  comes  when  political  contrivances,  that 
have  been  necessary  and  inevitable  in  their  day,  are  outworn 
and  grow  dangerous.  State  sovereignty  made  the  United 
States  of  America  possible  ;  to-day  few  foreigners  who  watsh 
its  operations  would  say  that  it  could  not  be  greatly  reduced 
with  advantage.^  The  Greek's  local  attachments  stood  in 
the  way  of  his  sympathies  and  his  power  of  grasping  a  world- 
situation. 

In  the  third  place,  the  future  ruler  must  be  able  to  secure 
that  mankind  should  not  recede  in  culture  and  civilization. 
He  must  have  an  intelligent  feeling  for  the  great  achievements 
of  Greek  genius.  Pericles  was  right ;  Athens  had  been,  and 
was,  an  education  of  mankind,  and  he  who  was  to  rule  and 
guide  mankind  must  be  trustee  for  this  splendid  heritage. 
Such  a  task  meant  some  depth  of  nature,  a  capacity  not 
quickly  found  in  Spartan,  Theban,  or  Roman. 

The  fourth  qualification  for  the  new  ruler — perhaps  the 
hardest  to  find — was  some  power  of  enlisting  the  ruled,  of 
winning  at  least  their  consent  if  not  their  co-operation.  The 
Greek  race,  said  Aristotle,  lying  between  Europe  and  Asia, 
and  sharing  the  spiritual  gifts  of  both,  "  if  it  could  be  formed 
into  one  state,  would  be  able  to  rule  the  world."  ^  The  first 
thing  on  which  Isocrates  insists,  if  Athens  in  380,  or  if  Philip 

1  Immigration  from  Europe  into  the  Eastern  States,  and  the  settle 
ment  by  colonists  from  them  of  the  Western  States,  together  with  the 
relegation  of  slavery  to  the  past,  have  dimmed  the  old  traditions  and 
associations  that  made  State  right  a  passion. 

'^Aristotle,  Pol.  vii.  7,  3,  13276.     Thucydides  had  made  a  similar 
remark  about  the  Scythians  (ii.  97). 
24 


370  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

in  346,  can  be  induced  to  lead  a  crusade  against  Persia,  is  the 
reconciliation  of  the  Greek  world  within  itself — and  "  by  now," 
he  says  in  346,  "  I  know  they  are  levelled  down  together  by 
misfortunes,  and  will  choose  the  advantages  of  concord," 
and  Philip  can  manage  it,  he  alone. ^ 

The  difficulties  to  be  overcome  were  obvious.  Greece 
was  doubly  disintegrated — "  We  quarrel  about  the  Cyclades, 
and  abandon  all  those  Greek  cities  of  Asia,  all  those  resources, 
to  the  King."  ^  No  Greek  city-state  could  long  trust  its 
neighbour — no,  nor  by  now  its  citizens.  Faction  and  fury 
had  always  marked  Greek  politics,  but  they  had  at  least 
implied  a  certain  patriotism  ;  now,  the  citizens  simply  went 
away  and  settled  where  business  took  them,  or  enlisted  by 
the  thousand  under  the  Persian — satrap,  prince,  or  King.  In 
a  sense,  it  was  an  armed  particularism,  too  ;  for  the  land  was 
studded  with  rock-fortresses,  here  an  Acropolis,  there  an 
Acrocorinthus,  a  Cadmeia,  which  gave  the  cities  a  military 
significance,  useless  in  offensive  warfare,  fatally  effective  in 
defensive  ;  and  where  mercenary  soldiers  were  everywhere 
available,  even  a  small  town  could  be  amazingly  strong  just 
for  the  short  time  that  might  be  critical.^  Pharnabazos 
rebuilt  the  Long  Walls  of  Athens,  because  he  saw  that  a 
fortress  in  Attica  linked  with  the  sea  would  be  irreducible  by  the 
Spartans  for  ever,  unless  he  gave  them  a  fleet,  which  he  did 
not  mean  to  do,  and  thus  their  hegemony  would  be  so  shaken 
as  to  be  ineffective  except  for  Persian  purposes.  He  was 
right.*  "  There  is  nothing  easier  for  the  Persian,"  says 
Isocrates,  "  than  to  find  means  to  keep  us  from  ever  leaving 
off  to  fight  against  one  another.  ...  It  is  perfectly  plain  and 
easy  ;  it  is  impossible  ever  to  have  a  secure  peace  unless  we 
join  in  a  common  war  against  the  barbarians,  impossible  for 
the  Greeks  to  be  of  one  mind  till  we  draw  our  advantages 
from  the  same  sources  and  take  our  risks  against  the  same 
people."  6    The  last  sentence  is  not  obscure  to  anyone  who 

^  Isocrates,  Philip,  40,  41.  ^  Isocrates,  Paneg.  136. 

^  Cf.  the  advice  given  by  Conon  to  Pharnabazos  about  the  island 
and  sea-board  cities  in  393  (Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  8,  2). 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv,  8,  9. 

^  Isocrates,  Paneg.  134,  173.  Cf.  Panath.  160,  with  its  picture  of 
separate  Greek  embassies  at  Susa  intriguing  against  each  other. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  371 

remembers  the  thirty  thousand  archers  that  drove  Agesilaos 
out  of  Asia.^  If  this  pleasantry  about  the  coinage  served  to 
salve  Spartan  pride,  it  reveals  at  once  the  strength  of  the 
Persian  King  and  the  weakness  of  Sparta.  No  Greek  power 
controlled  so  many  "  archers,"  and  no  Greek  state  could 
resist  them. 

But  if  these  were  the  obstacles  to  Greek  union,  other 
things,  as  we  have  seen,  worked  for  it.  Culture,  it  was  more 
and  more  felt,  had  no  provincialisms.  The  Greek  name  was 
less  a  sign  of  blood  than  of  mind ;  it  belonged  to  those  who 
thought  and  felt  in  the  Greek  way — a  universal  term  for  the 
highest  humanity. 2  Commerce,  too,  even  if  the  cultured 
despised  it,  was  another  bond  of  union,  fusing  races  in  every 
port  of  the  Mediterranean  already,  as  it  was  to  do  on  a  larger 
scale  in  Alexandria  and  Antioch.  There  was  clearly,  too,  a 
sense  widely  prevalent  that  the  old  city-state  ideals  had 
failed — a  feeling  that  they  were  hardly  worth  contending 
for  ;  the  career  of  Demosthenes  is  a  witness  to  this,  for  his 
whole  life  was  a  protest  against  it.  And  there  was  a  nobler 
sense,  too,  that  Greeks  were  Greeks.  War  between  Greeks, 
Plato  taught,^  was  unnatural — it  was  madness  and  folly, 
said  Isocrates ;  *  and  Aristophanes  had  said  so  before  either 
of  them.  5 

It  was  for  freedom  that  the  Greek  world  had  fought ;  and 
it  was  believed  at  the  moment  that  the  day,  which  saw  the 
returned  exiles  level  the  Long  Walls  of  Athens  to  the  music 
of  flute-girls,  was  to  be  the  First  Day  of  Greek  Freedom. 
The  first  question  now  was,  whether  freedom  and  Spartan 
hegemony  were  compatible. 

Our  chief  authorities  for  this  period  are  Xenophon  and 
Isocrates.  It  is  freely  made  a  matter  of  reproach  against 
Xenophon  that  he  was  a  friend  of  Sparta — Freeman  hurls 
"  renegade  "  at  him  whenever  it  comes  into  his  head  ;  renegade 
he  was  not,  but  up  to  a  certain  point  he  did  admire  Spar tc 
and  her  institutions  and  some  of  her  men.  This  admiration 
makes  his  story  more  significant ;  and  his  long  residence  in  the 
Peloponnese,  not  far  from  a  sanctuary  of  truce,  his  intimacy 

^  Plut.  Artax.  20,     Cf.  p.  223.  2  Isocrates,  Paneg.  50. 

3  Plato,  Rep.  V.  470.  *  Isocrates,  Paneg.  133  f. 

*  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  1128  f. 


372  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

with  Spartan  leaders,  and  his  exclusion  in  large  measure  from 
Athenian  sources  of  information,  all  contribute  to  bring  into 
his  pages  a  fullness  and  freshness  of  detail  about  Peloponnesian 
matters  that  we  find  nowhere  else.  Much  that  he  tells  of"* 
Elis,  let  us  say,  or  Phleious  or  Sicyon,  is  perhaps  in  itself  of 
little  significance  in  the  world's  history  ;  these  were  small 
and  unimportant  places,  but  they  stood  in  close  relations 
with  a  great  power,  and  everything  that  illuminates  Sparta's 
methods  at  this  period  is  of  value  to  the  historian  who  wishes 
to  understand  the  world's  course.  The  fact  also  holds  good 
here  too,  that  whenever,^enophon  has  a  real  story  to  tell, 
it  is  always  interesting ;  and  here,  as  in  other  parts  of  his 
writings,  he  takes  us  on  to  ground  untrodden  by  the  Athenians 
and  their  friends. 

Sparta,  it  is  generally  recognized,  had  become  under  the 
Lycurgean  system  essentially  an  armed  camp.  Her  constant 
peril  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Helot  population,  and  most  of 
her  institutions  were  designed  to  safeguard  her  in  this  quarter.^ 
Apart  from  Tarentum,  the  story  of  whose  founding  is  very 
obscure,  Sparta  had  no  colonies.  All  her  expansion  had  been 
at  the  cost  of  her  neighbours,  adding  field  to  field,^  everything 
as  it  were  within  a  ring  fence,  and  that  very  carefully  guarded. 
Foreign  influences,  ideas  of  freedom,  should  not  reach  the 
Helots  ;  there  was  no  Messenian  nation.  Outside  her  actual 
domain  Sparta  was  faced  with  difficulties  in  the  Peloponnese 
itself.  She  could  not  keep  out  liberal  ideas,  democracy,  and 
the  love  of  freedom  ;  and  several  communities  of  the  Pelopon- 
nese were  conspicuously  democratic  in  sentiment  and  govern- 
ment— ^Argos,  Mantineia,  and  Elis,  while  even  in  more  loyal  and 
friendly  states  the  poison  worked,  as  the  story  of  Sicyon  shows. ^ 
Quite  apart  from  the  danger  this  meant  among  the  Helots, 
it  bore  upon  Sparta's  hegemony  of  the  world.  For,  when 
she  led  her  troops  out,  it  was  usually  by  one  road — over  the 
mountains  northward  into  Arcadia,  past  Tegea,  Mantineia, 
and  Orchomenos,  and  then  round  eastward  past  Phleious 
to  the   Isthmus  of  Corinth.    The  early  relations  of  Sparta 

1  Thuc.  iv.  80. 

2  On  the  large  holdings  of  land  by  Spartiates,  see  Isocrates,  Panath. 
179,  beyond  what  any  other  Greeks  hold. 

*  Sicyon,  Xen.  Hellenica,  vii.  i,  44-46. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  373 

with  Tegea  are  described  by  Herodotus/  in  some  very  interest- 
ing chapters.  The  great  Democratic  aUiance  engineered  by 
Alcibiades  after  the  Peace  of  Nicias  is  set  forth  by  Thucydides. 
It  was  a  failure,  and  collapsed  as  a  result  of  one  of  the  mary 
battles  of  Mantineia  ;  but  Sparta  remembered  it,  ioi  she  had 
a  long  memofy  and  never  let  anything  slip,  even  if  she  had 
to  wait. 

In  the  forty  years  now  under  survey  Sparta  was  twice  in  a 
position  of  triumph  and  power  which  left  her  her  hands  free  to 
improve  "her  arrangements  at  home.  The  victory  of  404  was 
followed  by  the  resolve  to  "  discipline  "  Elis.  The  land  was 
ravaged  more  than  once,  till  the  drunken  democrat  leader 
Thrasydaios  sobered  down  and  accepted  Sparta's  terms. 
The  fortifications  of  Phea  and  Cyllene  were  dismantled,  and 
autonomy  was  given  to  all  the  communes  and  townships  ; 
the  temple  of  Olympian  Zeus  was  left  to  the  men  of  Elis,  and 
peace  and  an  alliance  established. ^  Autonomy  once  more  is' 
the  watchword,  but  once  more  it  is  the  watchword  with  the 
qualification  familiar  to  us  in  Thucydides — "  conveniently 
for  the  Spartans."  ^  Involved  in  the  story  is  a  sub-plot ; 
Xenias,  who  was  said  to  measure  his  father's  money  by  the 
bushel,  conceived  the  hope  of  an  agreement  with  Sparta,  and 
with  his  friends  set  about  a  massacre  of  the  democrat  party, 
and  killed  a  man  very  like  Thrasydaios.  But  that  hero  was 
elsewhere  drunk,  asleep,  and  safe.  His  partisans  found  him, 
swarmed  about  him  "  like  bees  round  a  queen,"  and  the  tide 
turned,  and  the  oligarchic  faction  had  to  fly  to  the  Spartans. 
It  is  likely  enough  that,  after  Thrasydaios  had  negotiated  his 
peace,  they  came  back  and  drove  him  out.  It  is  interesting 
to  note  in  passing  the  frequent  imputation  at  this  period  of 
drunkenness  to  democrat  leaders  ;  Cleophon  addressed  the 
Ecclesia  drunk,  we  are  told,*  and  Isocrates  suggests  that  in 
Athens  a  drunkard  always  seems  a  more  loyal  democrat  than 
a  man  who  does  not  get  tipsy.  ^  It  looks  very  like  mere  oli 
garchic  slander — the  only  way  in  which  some  people  could  ■ 
account  for  democratic  principles  by  now.  They  make  no 
such  allegations  as  to  the  leaders  in  old  days. 

1  Herodotus,  i.  65-68.  ^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  2,  21-31. 

*  Thuc.  i.  144,  roT?  Aa/ceSai/iOi/iois  eirurqbelais  avrovofjieladai. 

*  'Adrjvaicop  HoXtreia,  34,  3.  ^  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  13, 


374  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Again,  in  386  the  Peace  of  Antalkidas  gave  Sparta  a  fresh 
triumph  over  foes  abroad  and  freedom  to  look  nearer  home. 
They  sent  orders  to  the  Mantineians  to  take  down  their  walls — 
otherwise  they  would  look  on  them  as  enemies,  for  they  had 
noticed  a  good  deal  that  was  suspicious,  viz.  grain  exports  to 
Argos,  a  refusal  of  military  service  on  the  pretext  of  some 
sacred  truce  or  other,  and,  in  short,  a  general  envy  of  Sparta, 
and  pleasure  in  her  misfortunes.^    Not  unnaturally  the  demand 
was  refused,  and  a  siege  followed,  one  of  the  few  in  which 
Spartans  were  successful.     They  dammed  up  the  river  which 
flowed  through  the  city,  just  where  it  left  the  walls  ;  the  town 
was  flooded,  and  its  foundations  began  to  give  way.     The 
terms  of  surrender  were  stiffened  by  the  new  demand  that 
the  city  should  be  broken  up  into  villages.     The  old  exiled 
Spartan  king,  Pausanias,  who  lived  there,  interceded  with  his 
son  and  successor  for  the  friends  of  Argos,  who  were  allowed 
to  go  with  their  lives.     But  "  the  walls  were  destroyed  and 
Mantineia  distributed  into  four  villages  as  of  old.     At  first 
they  were  annoyed  at  having  to  leave  their  houses  and  build 
other  ones  ;   but  when  the  people  of  substance  found  them- 
selves living  nearer  their  farms  among  the  villages  and  in 
enjoyment  of  aristocratic  government,  and  rid  of  the  weari- 
some demagogues,  they  began  to  be  pleased."  2    The  Spartans 
sent  to  each  of  these  villages  a  xenagos,  a  military  officer  to 
levy  contingents,  which  were  raised  far  more  readily,  Xenophon 
says,  under  the  new  system  than  tmder  the  democracy.     This 
was   "  autonomy   convenient    to    the    Spartans."     Isocrates, 
writing  shortly  after  the  event,  puts  it  differently — "  When 
the  peace  was  made,  they  destroyed  the  city  of  the  Manti- 
neians "  ;  3  and  looking  back  at  it  in  after  years  (355)  he  sums 
up  the  story  and  points  to  the  results — "  they  abused  the 
Peloponnese  and  filled  it  with  revolutions  and  wars.     What 
city  was  there  which  they  did  not  attack  ?  " — Elis,  Corinth, 
Mantineia,  he  runs  over,  Phleious  and  Argos — "  they  never  left 

1  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  2,  1-2. 

2  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  2,  7.  How  ready  they  were  to  be  done  with 
the  village  system  and  to  rebuild  their  walls  in  371,  in  spite  of  the 
friendly  suggestions  of  AgesUaos  to  delay,  he  tells  in  a  more  convincing 
section  (vi.  5,  3-5). 

*  Isocrates,  Paweg-.  126. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  375 

off  ill-treating  the  rest  and  preparing  for  themselves  the  defeat 
at  Leuctra.  Some  say  that  defeat  was  the  cause  of  Sparta's 
trouble  ;  they  are  wrong.  It  was  not  because  of  Leuctra 
that  their  allies  hated  them,  it  was  the  outrages  of  the  years 
before  it  that  brought  Leuctra  upon  them."  ^ 

How  men  felt  about  the  Spartans  in  the  Peloponnese 
is  brought  out  by  Xenophon's  story  of  the  plot  of  Kinadon,  a 
disfranchised  Spartiate  (about  398-397). 2  "  He  took  me,"  said 
the  informer,  "  to  the  edge  of  the  market-place  and  told  me  to 
count  how  many  Spartiates  were  in  the  market.  I  counted — 
king,  ephors,  gerusia,  and  others,  about  forty.  Why  did  you 
tell  me  to  count  them,  J<^inadon  ?  said  I.  And  he  answered  : 
These  reckon  as  your  enemies,  and  the  rest — all  the  rest, 
four  thousand  and  more — your  allies  ;  "  and  the  same  on 
coimtry  roads  and  on  the  farms — one  Spartiate,  one  enemy, 
and  everybody  else  an  ally — helots,  neodamodes,  inferiors,  and 
perioeci ;  ^  "  for  wherever  among  these  there  was  talk  at  all 
about  Spartiates,  not  a  man  of  them  could  conceal  that  he 
would  like  to  eat  them  raw  " — the  old  proverbial  Greek  phrase 
with  which  Zeus  twitted  Hera  about  the  Trojans.  So  much 
for  Spartan  rule  at  home  and  in  the  Peloponnese. 

With  these  principles  and  no  more  faculty  than  this 
for  winning  the  consent  of  the  ruled,  Sparta  undertook  to  rule 
the  Greek  world  at  large.  Empire  of  the  sea,  says  Isocrates, 
playing  on  the  word  ap^n,  was  to  them  the  beginning  of  mis- 
fortunes ;  they  found  power  a  very  hetaira,  charming  and 
ruinous.*  The  war,  as  said  above,  had  left  Sparta  weakened, 
and  her  government,  as  Polybius  pointed  out,  had  never  been 
designed  for  empire  abroad.  "  As  long,"  he  says,^  "  as  their 
ambition  was  confined  to  governing  their  immediate  neigh-  , 
hours,  or  even  the  Peloponnesians  only,  they  could  manage 
with  the  resources  and  supplies  of  Laconia  itself,  having  all  the 
material  of  war  ready  to  hand,  and  being  able  without  much 
expenditure  of  time  to  return  home  or  convey  provisions  with 
them.     But  directly  they  took  in  hand  to  dispatch  naval  ex- 

1  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  99,  100.  ^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  3,  4-1 1. 

*  Perioecic  towns,  says  Isocrates  [Panath.  179),  are  called  poleis,  but 
in  reality  have  less  power  than  Athenian  demes. 

*  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  loi,  103.     So  too  Polybius,  vi.  50. 

«  Polybius,  vi.  49  (Shuckburgh's  translation,  slightly  altered). 


376  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

peditions,  or  to  go  on  campaigns  on  land  outside  the  Pelopon- 
nese,  it  was  evident  that  neither  their  iron  currency,  nor  their 
use  of  crops  for  payment  in  kind,  would  be  able  to  supply  them 
with  what  they  lacked  if  they  abode  by  the  legislation  of 
Lycurgus  ;  for  such  undertakings  required  as  well  a  currency 
universally  accepted  and  goods  from  abroad.  So  they  were 
compelled  to  go  to  the  gates  of  the  Persians,  to  lay  tribute 
on  the  islanders,  and  exact  silver  from  all  the  Greeks."  Be- 
tween 404  and  393  Sparta  saw  her  navy  decline — it  had  been 
built  with  Persian  gold,  for  Persia's  purposes  ;  Persia  wanted 
it  no  more,  and  a  Persian  fleet  under  Conon  destroyed  it. 

Another  fatal  weakness  of  the  system  of  Lycurgus  was 
that  it  bred  nothing  but  soldiers.  The  Spartan  harmost,  of 
whom  Lysander  himself  said  that  he  did  not  understand  how 
to  rule  freemen,  was  a  typical  product  of  Spartan  education 
— simply  unintelligent  of  everything,  as  incapable  as  a  Turk 
of  comprehending  how  the  minds  of  men  move  or  that  they 
do  move  at  all.  A  city,  Aristotle  said,^  must  have  quality 
and  quantity — "  by  quahty  I  mean  freedom,  wealth,  education, 
good  birth  ;  by  quantity,  superiority  of  numbers."  Sparta 
failed  in  both  directions — she  had  not  the  training,  the  quick- 
ness and  variety  of  mind  that  free  institutions  alone  can  give, 
any  more  than  she  had  wealth  or  numbers.  Every  Qreek 
dreaded  the  Spartan  ;  none  liked  him.  What  Kii:a.don  had 
pointed  out  to  the  conspirator  in  the  Spartan  market,  held  all 
over  the  world.  Only  those  stuck  to  her  who  could  by  her 
means  alone  enjoy  the  t5rrannical  rule  of  a  clique  over  their 
fellow-citizens  ;  and  these  "  decarchies  "  of  Lysander  notori- 
ously shattered  what  goodwill  Sparta  had  won  by  ending  the 
Athenian  Empire. 2 

Yet  another  source  of  weakness  for  Sparta  was  a  want  of 
clear  policy  regarding  her  Empire.  Athens  with  a  negligible 
minority  had  had  a  consistent  plan  in  dealing  with  her  allies 
and  dependants^ — as  consistent  as  the  changing  face  of  human 
things  will  allow — a  plan  that  developed,  but  in  a  way  that 
could  be  foreseen.  Sparta  was  the  prey  of  parties.  Lysander 
played  for  his  own  hand ;  King  Pausanias  countered  him 
when  he  could — generally  for  the  good  of  Greece ;   boards  of 

^  Aristotle,  Pol.  iv.  12,  i,  1296  h. 

*  On  the  decarchies,  see  Isocrates,  Paneg.  i  lo-i  14. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  377 

ephors  seem  to  have  come  and  gone,  watching,  supporting,  or 
checking  king  and  general  as  they  chose  ;  and  meanwhile 
there  were  plots  and  counterplots — "  it  is  said,"  reports 
Aristotle,  "  that  at  Sparta  Lysander  attempted  to  overthrow 
the  monarchy,  and  King  Pausanias  the  ephoralty."  ^  Lysander 
saw  Sparta  renounce  his  scheme  of  decarchies,  and  Pausanias 
was  finally  exiled — nominally  for  failing  to  rescue  Lysander' s 
dead  body  without  a  truce. 2  Sparta  at  last  got  a  real  head 
in  Agesilaos,  but  not  a  good  one. 

Ten  years  of  Spartan  supremacy  saw  Corinth  and  Thebes 
imited  with  Athens  against  her.  Representatives  of  these 
cities  had  wished  in  404  to  destroy  Athens  altogether — a  few 
years  showed  them  how  needful  she  was.  The  movement 
which  drew  the  cities  together  against  Sparta  reached  its 
height,  when  the  quarrel  between  Sparta  and  Persia  became 
open  and  obvious.  The  Persian  King  had  genuine  grievances. 
Persian  subsidies  had  carried  Sparta  through  the  latter  half 
of  the  Peloponnesian  War  to  her  victory ;  and  then,  in  the 
civil  war  between  the  princes,  Sparta  had  countenanced  and 
supported  the  one  who  fell,  the  usurper.  In  a  series  of  bargains 
made  at  Miletus  in  the  years  412-411,  Sparta  had  with  some 
haggling  virtually  abandoned  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  to 
Persia.^  So  long  as  Cyrus  was  in  control  of  Persian  pohc^^' 
in  the  West  and  in  friendly  relations  with  Sparta  through 
Lysander,  no  question  had  arisen  ;  Lysander  had  organized 
his  decarchies  in  the  cities,  and  Cyrus  tolerated  it.  But  when 
Cyrus  had  fallen,  the  Asiatic  Greeks  were  assigned  to  Tissa- 
phemes,  who  had  negotiated  the  third  treaty  of  Miletus.  It 
has  been  suggested  *  that  the  cities  were  still  held  by  oligarchies 
friendly  to  Sparta  ;  which  meant  some  understanding  between 
the  democratic  parties  and  Persia — the  victory  of  democrat 
or  of  Persian  would  be  a  triumph  for  both,  and  equally  a  blow 
to  Sparta.  That  Sparta  realized  this  and  began  to  trim,  seems 
to  follow  from  Xenophon's  statement  that  the  ephors  abolished 

^  Aristotle,  Pol.  v.  i,  10,  1301  h. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  5,  25.  For  Pausanias'  literary  occupations 
in  exile,  see  a  damaged  passage  in  Strabo,  c.  366.  See  also  Pausanias, 
iii.  5,  1-6. 

*  The  three  treaties  are  in  Thuc.  viii.  18,  37,  58. 

*  By  Eduard  Meyer,  Theopomps  Hellenika,  p.  113. 


378  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

the  deearchies.  But  now  Tissaphernes  moved,  and  the  oKgarchs 
of  her  own  creation  appealed  to  Sparta  for  protection  against  the 
Persians  to  whom  Sparta  had  ceded  them  by  a  treaty  which  was 
the  basis  of  her  present  position  of  power.  It  was  an  awkward 
situation.  Sparta  tried  to  meet  it  by  an  embassy  "  forbidding 
Tissaphernes  to  take  active  steps  against  the  cities.  But  the 
satrap  could  read  the  situation  too,  and  he  replied  by  besieging 
Cyme.  Sparta  could  do  nothing  now  but  make  war — not 
on  the  King,  but  on  Tissaphernes.  The  loose  texture  of  the 
Persian  Empire  saved  such  a  distinction  from  absurdity. 

The  Spartan  war  on  Persia  achieved  the  restoration  of 
Athens.  Phamabazos,  a  more  active  spirit  than  Tissaphernes, 
went  up  to  Susa  and  got  the  easy-going  King  interested  in  the 
project  of  a  fleet.  It  may  be  that  the  Spartan  government 
had  some  wind  of  this,  before  the  S3n:acusan  Herodas  brought 
Greece  news  of  the  three  hundred  Persian  ships  preparing.^ 
At  all  events,  they  told  Thibron,  their  commander,  to  attempt 
Caria,  the  possession  of  which  would  have  controlled  any 
Persian  attack  in  Aegaean  waters.^  But  neither  Thibron 
nor  his  successors  were  in  a  position  to  do  anything  effective. 
The  country  was  enormous,  and  they  lacked  cavalry  ;  and  the 
enemy  avoided  general  actions.  The  two  satraps  were  rivals, 
and  neither  of  them  was  very  sorry  to  see  the  other  occupied 
with  the  Greek  marauders.  But  the  manoeuvre,  by  which 
Tissaphernes  headed  Derkylidas  into  the  satrapy  of  Phama- 
bazos, converted  the  "  war  against  Tissaphernes  "  into  open 
war  with  Persia. ^  Derkylidas  maintained  himself,  moved 
about,  and  had  some  successes.  He,  too,  was  told  to  attempt 
Caria,  but  the  two  satraps  met  him  and  began  negotiations, 
which  had  to  receive  the  sanction  of  the  King  and  of  Sparta. 
In  reality,  these  negotiations  could  not  have  been  meant  to 
achieve  anything,  but  Pharnabazos  needed  time  to  get  his 
fleet  in  order.* 

Then  came  the  definite  news  in  396  that  Persia  was  really 
preparing  a  fleet,  and  it  waked  anxiety  in  Sparta.  Lysander, 
however,  remembered  the  successful  return  of  the  Ten  Thou- 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  i.         ^  Meyer,  Theopomps  Hellenika,  p.  9. 

*  Judeich,  Kleinas.  Stud.  p.  45. 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  ii.  2,  18-20,  and  Judeich,  op.  cit.  p.  52.  See  also 
Isocrates,  Paneg.  142. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  379 

sand,  and  reckoned  that  the  Greeks  had  fleet  enough  to  face 
the  Persian  navy.  The  result  was  the  invasion  of  Asia  by 
Agesilaos.^ 

It  seems  quite  clear  that  Agesilaos  crossed  the  Aegaean 
with  the  very  largest  intentions — "  he  had  great  hopes  that 
he  would  take  the  King."  2    An  earlier  king  of  Sparta,  who 
was  reckoned  mad,  had  declined  such  a  venture  ;  ^  but  there 
were  still  in  Asia  the  Greek  mercenaries  who  had  gone  to  the 
King's  very  gates  and  had  all  but  taken  the  King  ;    why 
should  they  not  go  up  again  and  do  it  ?  *    Agesilaos  revealed 
to    Tissaphernes   another  object — the  autonomy  (much-used 
word)  of  the  Greek  cities  in  Asia,  and  they  made  another  truce, 
to  see  what  the  King  would  say.^    But  the  solemn  sacrifice, 
which   Agesilaos   had   wanted   to    perform  in   the    style    of 
Agamemnon  at  AuUs,  surely  suggested  a  larger  purpose  ® — 
Agamemnon  had  not  been  content  to  make  truces  to  see  if 
Priam  would  allow  a  few  towns  to  govern  themselves.    No,  the 
Greek  world  took  the  great  venture  seriously.     Jason,  accord- 
ing to  Polydamas  in  Xenophon,  said  he  thought  the  Great  King 
would  be  easier  to  conquer  than  Greece,  and  added  that  he 
remembered    that  the    Great    King    had    been   reduced   to 
dreadful   straits    {ek   irav  a<pcK€To)   by  Agesilaos.'    Isocrates 
believed  the  thing  could  be  done — and  for  years  urged  it  upon 
his  countrymen,  and  then  on  Philip  ;   the  only  reason  he  saw 
for  the  failure  of  Agesilaos  was  that  the  Spartan  had  two 
aims,  the  reduction  of  the  King  and  the  restoration  of  friends 
of  his  own  to  cities  which  had  exiled  them,^  and  the  latter 
purpose  involved  so  much  trouble  and  confusion  that  there 
was  no  chance  of  doing  anything  against  the  barbarian.^     In 
other  words,  Sparta  had  lost  the  goodwill  of  Greece.     Agesilaos 
himself  explained  his  retreat,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  thirty 
thousand  "  archers  "  sent  to  Greece. i** 

1  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  2.  ^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  5,1. 

3  Cleomenes,  Herodotus,  v.  49  fE.  *  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  i,  41, 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  5-6. 

'  Xen.  Hellenica,  iii.  4,  3-4  ;    his  anger  with  the  Boeotarchs  who 
stopped  it. 

'  Xen.  Hellenica,  vi.  i,  12. 

8  A  curious  but  illuminating  commentary  on  the  Spartan  demand 
for  the  autonomy  of  the  cities. 

9  Isocrates,  PMi^,  87.  ^o  Plut.  Agesilaos,  20. 


38o  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

This  subsidy  has  been  put  in  a  very  odious  Hght  by  Xeno- 
phon  as  virtually  a  bribe.  The  unknown  contemporary 
historian,  whose  fragments  were  found  at  Oxyrhynchos, 
maintains  that  the  gold  was  not  the  cause  of  the  war,  though 
some  say  so,  not  knowing  that  all  the  men  concerned  had 
been  at  enmity  for  a  long  while  with  the  Spartans,  and  were  on 
the  look-out  for  some  means  of  bringing  on  war.^  War,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  more  and  more  a  matter  of  finance,  and  this 
subsidy  sent  by  Tithraustes  made  it  possible  for  the  Spartans 
to  be  embroiled  in  Europe,  while  the  Persian  fleet  under 
Conon  really  got  to  work  after  its  many  hindrances.  And  so 
it  fell  out.  Agesilaos  was  recalled.  Conon  won  the  battle 
of  Cnidos,  and  the  Athenian  Long  Walls  rose  again.  The  old 
idea  of  Tissaphernes  had  prevailed  in  the  hands  of  his  rival — 
to  keep  the  Greek  powers  level  and  balanced.^ 

Let  us  sum  up  what  this  war  between  Sparta  and  Persia 
has  brought  out.  Persia  has  won  the  victory  by  successful 
use  of  the  Spartan  engine — the  appeal  to  particularism. 
Greece  is  divided  by  Persia,  and  Persia  triumphs,  just  as 
Sparta  divides  and  triumphs  over  the  Peloponnese  ;  and 
another  instance  is  added  to  the  Hst  of  those  who  urge  Greece 
to  union  by  showing  her  what  she  suffers  from  division.  For 
the  moment  it  is  the  triumph  of  Persia  and  of  particularism. 
But  some  prophetic  hints  of  the  future  appear.  The  plan  of  a 
bold,  strong  blow  at  the  heart  of  Persia  was  formed  and  was 
tried.  It  failed,  but  it  was  remembered  and  quoted,  and  it 
would  be  tried  again.  And  through  the  failure  and  the  con- 
fusion we  get  a  gleam  of  a  prince  and  a  hero.  Agesilaos  was 
not  a  very  great  man  ;  he  was  a  hard,  narrow,  cunning,  capable 
Spartan  with  no  great  gifts,  no  real  statesmanship,  no  moral 
depth,  only  the  near  outlook  of  an  old-time  Spartan  kin^ — not 
a  great  soldier  even — a  politician  of  energy  and  ambition  on 
old  lines  and  a  low  plane  ;  yet  he  captured  the  interest  of 
Xenophon,  for  there  was  something  of  a  man  about  him, 
something  soldierly,  something  of  a  prince,  and  his  career 
seemed  to  show  that  some  day  a  prince  might  achieve  a  final 
victory  over  Persia. 

^  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  2,  i,  2  ;    col.  i.,  ii.     He  declines  into  the 
suggestion  that  the  politicians  had  an  interest  in  a  state  of  war  existing. 
*  Thuc.  viii.  57,  i^ovKero  irravicrovv.     See  Chapter  VII,  p.  226. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  381 

In  spite  of  some  victorious  battles,  the  next  few  years  were 
a  time  of  difficulty  for  Sparta,  till  in  387  her  envoy,  Antalkidas, 
came  down  from  Susa  with  a  new  and  final  instrument  for  the 
humiliation  of  the  Greeks — that  "  King's  Peace  "  which  was 
made  in  the  spring  of  386.  The  words  of  this  documen,t 
deserve  quotation.  "  King  Artaxerxes  thinks  it  just  that  the 
cities  in  Asia  shall  be  his,  and  of  the  islands  Clazomenai  and 
Cyprus.  All  the  other  Greek  cities,  little  and  great,  he  allows 
to  be  autonomous,  except  Lemnos  and  Imbros  and  Scyros, 
and  these  as  of  old  shall  belong  to  the  Athenians.  And  which- 
ever party  does  not  accept  this  peace,  on  them  I  will  make  war 
with  those  who  agree  to  it,  both  on  land  and  on  sea,  with  ships 
and  with  money."  ^ 

The  peace  is  a  landmark  in  Greek  history.  That  it  pro- 
claimed from  the  house-tops  the  bankruptcy  of  the  city-state, 
while  by  a  peculiar  irony  of  fate  it  made  the  autonomy  of  all 
Greek  cities  the  fundamental  article  of  the  settlement,  is  the 
striking  verdict  of  a  Canadian  scholar. 2  And  for  years  the 
Spartans  lorded  it  over  Greece  as  the  champions  and  repre- 
sentatives of  the  King's  Peace.  What  the  Greeks  thought  of 
it  we  can  read  in  the  Panegyric  of  Isocrates  written  at  or  about 
the  time — in  Polybius — in  Plutarch.  Once,  says  Isocrates,^ 
Athens  was  leader  of  Greece,  and  drove  the  Persian  off  the 
sea  and  off  the  Aegaean  coast ;  "  but  now  it  is  he  who  manages 
Greek  affairs,  gives  his  orders  as  to  what  is  to  be  done,  and  all 
but  appoints  quarter-masters  in  the  cities.  ...  Is  he  not 
arbiter  of  war  ?  manager  of  peace  ?  ...  do  we  not  go  sailing 
away  to  him,  as  to  a  master,  to  tell  tales  of  one  another  ?  and 
call  him  Great  King  as  if  we  were  his  captives  ?  "  "In  that 
peace  of  Antalkidas,"  wrote  Polybius,*  the  Spartans  "  sold 
and  betrayed  the  Greek  cities  to.  get  money  to  procure  them- 
selves lordship  over  the  Greeks."  "  A  peace,  if  we  can  call 
that  peace,"  says  Plutarch,"  "  which  was  an  outrage,  a  betrayal 
of  Greece ;  no  war  ever  brought  an  end  laden  with  more  dis- 
honour to  the  vanquished."  Antalkidas,  he  says,  using  a 
favourite  phrase  from  Herodotus,  "  danced  away  Leonidas 
and  Callicratidas  up  there  among  the  Persians  "  ;   "  the  glory 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  i,  31. 

2  W.  S.  Ferguson,  Hellenistic  Athens,  p.  6. 

^  Paneg.  120,  121.         *  Polybius,  vi.  49.         *  Plut.  Artax.  21,  22. 


382  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  Sparta  perished  before  Leuctra."  It  was  Athens,  says 
Beloch,  who  had  brought  in  the  barbarian,  meaning  in  393  ; 
it  would  be  more  just  to  say  Sparta  in  408.  If  it  is  urged  in 
reply  to  this  charge  of  the  betrayal  of  Greece  that  the  fifty 
years  between  the  return  of  Antalkidas  from  Susa  and  the 
succession  of  Alexander  to  the  throne  of  Macedon  saw  a  wide 
diffusion  of  Greek  influence  .in  Asia  Minor,i  -j-his  was,  no 
doubt,  a  great  gain  to  mankind  in  the  long  run  ;  but  we  may 
remember  that,  when  Callias  negotiated  his  far  more  honourable 
agreement  at  Susa,  in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  of  the  Athenian 
Empire,  the  Greek  cities  of  the  coast  were  reunited  to  their 
hinterland,  and  the  penetration  of  Asia  by  Greek  ideas  began 
again,  and  no  shame  went  with  it.  The  "  King's  Peace  " 
humiliated  Greece, 

Meanwhile  the  Peace  promised  Sparta  the  aid  of  Persia  in 
applying  her  Peloponnesian  methods  on  a  wider  scale.  Every 
one  who  wished  to  disorganize  and  divide  Greece  turned 
naturally  to  her.  Acanthus  invoked  her  against  the  rising 
confederacy  of  Olynthos,  and  with  the  aid  of  Amyntas  of 
Macedon  she  effected  its  disruption  and  the  ruin  of  the  cities 
— destroying  Greek  life  and  opening  the  door  to  Amyntas' 
successor,  in  her  jealousy  of  anything  like  union  among  Greeks. 
Polydamas  of  Pharsalos  invited  her  to  destroy  the  power 
which  Jason  was  consolidating,  but  in  this  instance  Sparta 
declined  to  intervene — in  view  of  all  she  was  doing,  2  but  she 
encouraged  Polydamas  to  do  his  best.  Elsewhere  there  was 
even  a  new  violence  in  Spartan  procedure  —  the  successful 
seizure  of  the  Cadmeia,  the  attempt  to  seize  the  Peiraieus, 
had  little  excuse  even  in  the  lax  morality  of  Greek  politics. 
But  the  comment  of  Agesilaos  makes  all  other  needless.  There 
was  some  indignation  in  Sparta  against  Phoebidas  for  seizing 
the  Cadmeia  ;  but,  said  Agesilaos,  "  if  he  had  done  what  was 
harmful  to  Sparta,  he  deserved  to  be  punished  ;  but  if  what  was 
to  her  advantage — well,  there  was  an  ancient  custom  that 
permitted  such  experiments."  ^ 

1  Chapter  VII.  p.  220. 

2  It  is  also  possible  that  Jason's  power,  being  more  consolidated 
than  that  of  a  group  of  federated  cities,  would  have  been  more  difficult 
to  deal  with — none  of  the  fissures  in  it  that  every  Greek  union  displayed. 

*  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  2,  32,  to  roiaira  avToa-x^Sid^eiv. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  383 

The  attitude  of  Sparta  to  every  other  Greek  state  hope- 
lessly wrecked  any  chance  she  might  have  had  of  an  effective 
headship  of  Greece.  The  victory  of  Cnidos  in  394  was  popular, 
and  seemed  to  mark  an  epoch  ;  Theopompus,  the  historian, 
made  it  the  term  of  his  work  which  concluded  the  history  of 
Thucydides.i  It  was  the  end  of  Spartan  rule  of  the  sea,  and 
Conon  and  Phamabazos  "  went  sailing  round  among  the  islands 
and  the  towns  on  the  seaboard,  driving  out  the  Laconian 
harmosts,  and  encouraging  the  cities  with  the  promise  that 
they  would  not  fortify  their  citadels,  but  would  leave  them 
autonomous  "  2  —  and,  as  the  case  of  Rhodes  suggests,  de- 
mocracies.^  Some  of  the  cities,  Diodorus  says,  kept  their 
freedom  and  some  joined  Conon.*  "  He  was  the  first,"  says 
Demosthenes,  "  to  give  the  city  something  to  say  about 
hegemony  to  the  Spartans,"  ^  and  he  quotes  the  phrase  from 
the  inscription  set  upon  Conon's  honour  to  the  effect  that 
"  he  set  free  the  allies  of  the  Athenians."  It  is  a  fine 
phrase — strikingly  like  that  coined  in  404  when  the  Athenian 
walls  were  demolished  on  the  First  Day  of  Freedom.  Once 
more  the  delusive  words — Freedom  and  Autonomy. 

From  now  onward  Athens  began  to  hold  her  own  and  to 
re-gather  allies — Mitylene,  Byzantium,  Chios.  An  Athenian 
inscription,^  pieced  together  out  of  fragments,  commemorates 
the  treaty  with  Chios — making  "  the  Chians  allies  for  (eV)  ' 
freedom  and  autonomy  "  ;  "  if  any  attack  the  Athenians,  the 
Chians  shall  lend  aid  to  the  utmost  of  their  power  ;  and  if  any 
attack  the  Chians,  the  Athenians  shall  lend  aid  to  the  utmost 
of  their  power  "  ;  and  "  the  alliance  shall  be  for  all  time."  The 
treaty  lays  down  significantly  that  they  "shall  keep  the  peace 
and  the  friendship  and  the  oaths  and  the  existing  agreement, 
which  the  King  swore  and  the  Athenians  and  the  Spartans 
and  the  rest  of  the  Greeks." 

In  the  winter  of  379-378  the  Thebans  managed  to  get 
the  Spartans  out  of  their  Cadmeia.^     Some  little  time  later, 

^  Diodorus,  xiv.  84.  ^  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  8,  i. 

^  Hellenica  Oxyrhynchia,  c.    10 ;   E.  Meyer,   Theopomps  Hellenika, 

P-  75- 

*  Diodorus,  xiv.  84.  ^  Demosthenes,  Lept.  68. 

«  Hicks  and  Hill,  No.  98.  '  Or  "  on  the  basis  of." 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  4,  2-12  ;  and  Plut.  Pelopidas. 


384  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Sphodrias,  a  Spartan  commander,  raided  the  Peiraieus.  He 
was  tried  for  this  at  Sparta — and  acquitted  through  the  inter- 
vention of  Agesilaos  ;  he  was  guilty  of  wrongdoing,  the  king 
admitted,  but  his  career  had  been  that  of  a  loyal  Spartan,  and 
it  was  hard  to  kill  such  a  man — Sparta  needed  soldiers  of  his 
stamp.^  The  two  events  threw  Athens  and  Thebes  together, 
and  next  year  a  great  forward  step  was  taken — a  reconstitution 
of  the  Confederacy  of  Delos.  For  two  or  three  years  a 
"  speech "  of  Isocrates  had  been  before  the  world,  the 
pamphlet  Panegyricos,  his  masterpiece  which  "  cheapened 
every  other  teacher  of  philosophy. "  ^  jhe  orator  was  the 
close  friend  of  Timotheos,  the  son  of  Conon,  and  it  has  been 
supposed  that  the  programme  set  forward  was  not  con- 
ceived without  some  understanding  with  the  leading 
spirits  of  x\thens.^  Briefly  its  proposals  are  the  union 
of  Greece,  a  crusade  against  Persia,  and  all  by  the  willing 
co-operation  of  all  Greeks  under  the  headship  of  Athens.  It 
is  difficult  to  measure  at  such  a  distance  of  time  the  effect  of  the 
work  of  a  professor  upon  national  history ;  but  the  last  century 
showed,  in  the  crucial  cases  of  Fichte  and  Treitschke,  and 
perhaps  Seeley,  the  power  of  the  chair  in  national  thought.  It 
could  not  yet  be  seriously  proposed  in  Athens  or  elsewhere  that 
any  city  should  declare  a  Panhellenic  crusade  against  Persia. 
The  very  terms  on  which  Athens  admitted  allies  to  her  new 
league  recognized  the  King's  Peace  and  excluded  the  King's 
subjects.  But  the  close  conjunction  of  the  brilliant  programme 
and  the  actual  reconstitution  of  the  Confederacy  is  significant ; 
Greece  began  to  seek  union,  and  under  the  leadership  of  Athens.* 
It  is  not  our  task  here  to  follow  the  fortunes  of  this  second 
Confederacy,  but  its  constitution  and  ideals  and  its  fate  all  bear 
upon  the  matter  in  hand — the  change  that  is  coming  over  the 
Greek  world.     Eduard  Meyer  holds  that  it  was  bound  to  fail — 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  4,  32, 

2  So  he  told  Philip  thirty-four  years  after  {Philip,  84).  More  in  the 
same  vein  {Anfid.  57,  61,  87).  Who  would  not  be  a  patriot  that  read 
the  Panegyric  ?   asks  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  {Isocrates,  c.  5,  §  544). 

3  Cf.  Plut.  Vit.  837  c. 

*  Wilamowitz,  Ar.  und  Athen.  ii.  381,  and  E.  Meyer,  Gr.  Gesch.  v. 
§923,  speak  with  emphasis  of  the  part  played  by  the  speech — 'without 
this  preparation  of  public  opinion  the  Confederacy  would  have  been 
unthinkable. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  385 

it  looked  backward  to  the  past ;  it  was  a  restoration,  and  like 
all  restorations  it  aimed  at  a  theoretical  ideal,  ignoring  the 
actual ;  right  and  might  were  unevenly  divided  in  it — all  had 
rights,  one  alone  had  any  considerable  might ;  it  must  fail. 
This  is  not  altogether  just.  There  is  no  denying  that  the  in- 
spiration came  from  the  past.  Every  Athenian,  who  thought 
of  the  project  in  377,  remembered  the  Confederacy  that  began 
to  fall  to  pieces  in  413,  whether  he  was  old  enough  to  have 
witnessed  that  evil  day  or  not.  It  was  very  like  the  old  Con- 
federacy again — with  Persia  honourably  recognized  ;  that  was 
involved  in  what  Cleon  once  called  "the  conditions  under 
which  we  live."  But  it  has  another  aspect — it  was  something 
of  a  step  toward  Federalism.  And  it  touched  the  actual  very 
closely  in  the  statement  of  its  aims — "  that  the  Spartans  may 
allow  the  Greeks  to  continue  in  peace,  free  and  autonomous, 
and  in  secure  enjoyment  of  their  own  lands."  ^  The  lines  were 
carefully  drawn  to  exclude  those  features  of  the  former  league 
that  had  lent  themselves  to  oppression  and  had  meant 
inequality.  There  were  to  be  no  "  cleruchies  " — the  resolution 
proposed  in  the  Ecclesia  by  Aristoteles,  and  carried,  forbade 
any  Athenian  to  buy,  acquire,  or  take  in  mortgage  any  house  or 
land  in  any  territory  of  the  alHes  on  any  excuse  or  in  any  way.^ 
It  would  even  appear  from  a  sentence  in  a  speech  of  Isocrates 
of  the  year  373  that  Athenians  actually  renounced  any  such 
possessions  which  they  held  at  the  time.^  So  one  of  the  great 
grievances  of  the  allies  in  the  old  days  was  done  away  with, 
and  "  tribute  "  {^6po<i)  went  with  it  in  the  same  resolution. 
No  magistrate  and  no  garrison  should  be  placed  in  any  allied 
town  ;  every  community  should  have  complete  Home  Rule, 
"free  and  autonomous,  with  whatever  constitution  it  shall 
choose."  Such  was  to  be  the  freedom  of  the  allies  of  Athens. 
For  the  general  purposes  of  the  Confederacy  and  the  safe- 
guarding of  its  freedom,  its  government  was  to  be  vested  in 
what  to-day  we  should  call  two  houses — the  Athenian  Ecclesia 
and  a  Synedrion,  or  council,  of  allies  sitting  in  Athens.  The 
Synedroi  of  the  Allies  are  already  mentioned  in  the  resolution  of 
Aristoteles.  Each  state,  whatever  its  size,  was  to  have  one 
vote,  just  as  each  of  the  United  States  of  America  sends  two 

1  Hicks  and  Hill,  No,  loi,  1.  9.  ^  Hicks  and  Hill,  No.  loi,  1.  s^. 

^  Isocrates,  Plataicos,  44. 
25 


386  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

senators  to  Washington.^  This  Federal  Council  gave  its 
opinion  on  questions  of  foreign  policy,  war,  peace,  alliances — 
the  placing  of  a  garrison  in  an  allied  town,  the  use  of  the  funds 
of  the  League — and  it  might  try  any  Athenian  who  broke  the 
law  by  acquiring  property  in  an  allied  state.  The  institution 
of  such  a  Council  shows  one  of  the  tendencies  of  the  age.  Long 
ago  Thales  had  urged  some  sort  of  federal  combination  upon 
the  attention  of  the  lonians  ;  ^  and  in  the  later  years  of  the 
Peloponnesian  War,  Aristophanes  had  advocated  closer  relations 
with  the  allies — something,  again,  in  the  federal  way  ;  but  the 
war  had  gone  too  far,  and  the  allies  were  thinking  of  freedom, 
nor  did  Athens  entertain  the  idea.  But  now,  as  we  shall  see, 
Federalism  was  in  the  air,  and  the  second  Confederacy  is 
essentially  a  compromise  between  the  old  Empire,  somewhat 
disguised  perhaps,  and  the  new  Federation, 

The  Confederacy  never  reached  the  brilliance  or  the  power 
of  the  former  one.  Compromise  was  in  its  charter — it  was 
not  the  old  Empire  with  a  clearly  recognized  headship  ;  it 
was  not  a  new  League  on  the  lines  of  strict  equality  ;  it  had 
at  once  too  much  head  and  not  enough.  Points  no  doubt 
were  clear  to  the  allies  which  time  has  dimmed  for  us,  but 
many  points  in  such  an  undertaking  are  obscured  of  set 
purpose  at  first  or  only  come  to  light  afterwards  ;  the  exact 
relations  of  the  parties  in  a  confederacy  are  always  difficult  to 
determine.  Athens  and  America  have  had  to  fight  to  determine 
one  point — can  a  member  of  a  confederacy  withdraw  when  it 
pleases,  whether  the  rest  consent  or  not  ?  And  what,  a  Greek 
would  ask,  is  autonomy  or  freedom,  if  it  cannot  ?  Consent 
is  one  of  the  first  difficulties  in  the  story  of  this  league  as  of 
every  other  that  Greeks  made. 

Behind  the  problem  of  consent  was  another — finance. 
Tribute  had  been  abolished — the  word  was  odious ;  but 
funds  >vere  needed,  and  the  Athenian  statesman  Callistratos 
invented  the  happy  term  Contribution  {crvvTa^i<;),  which 
avoided  some  associations.     But  whoever  arranged  the  con- 

^  Diodorus,  xv.  28. 

^  Herodotus,  i.  170,  Thales  eKiXeve  ev  fiovKevri^piov  "ibivas  €KTr}(rdai,  to 
8e  elvai  iv  Tea)'  Tfcov  yap  peaov  elvai  'loovirjs.  ras  8e  ahXas  iroXias  otKenfievas 
firjbev  ^a-aov  vopii^ecrdai  KaTanep  el  drjpoi  eiev.      A  sort  oi  unity  was  imposed 

on  Ionia  by  Artaphrenes  (Herodotus,  vi.  42) . 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  387 

tributions,  whatever  share  each  state  represented  in  the 
Federal  Council  may  have  had  in  fixing  or  assessing  them, 
they  were  after  all  taxes,  and  no  one  wanted  to  pay  them. 
Cities  would  pay  them  to  Phocion,  his  biographer  tells  us, 
for  they  trusted  him  ;  and  Isocrates  says  that  Timotheos 
alone  among  the  Athenian  generals  managed  to  get  through 
without  complaints  against  Athens — "  while  he  was  general 
you  cannot  find  that  there  were  revolts,  nor  changes  of  con- 
stitutions, nor  massacres,  nor  exiles,  nor  any  other  of  the 
irremediable  evils."  The  praise  of  Timotheos  is  a  revelation 
of  troubles — the  orator  writes  in  353  with  the  Social  War 
in  his  memory.  The  contributions  failed — they  produced 
wars  and  ruinous  expenditure.  Athenian  armies  were  com- 
posed of  mercenaries — men  without  cities,  runaway  slaves, 
the  clotted  rascality  of  everywhere,  always  ready  to  desert 
ii/L"  liii^.icr  pay  ;  a^.;.l  these  soldiers  plundered  wherever  they 
went,  and  "we  have  to  do  despite  to  our  own  allies  and 
wring  tribute  out  of  them,  to  provide  the  pay  for  these  common 
enemies  of  mankind  "  ;  so  says  Isocrates,  pleading  for  the 
Peace  of  355  ;  they  get  the  loot,  and  the  state  gets  the  ill  will.^ 
Their  generals,  as  Demosthenes  says,  go  off  oh  private  wars 
of  their  own  where  they  and  their  soldiers  have  better  chances 
of  plunder.  2  The  Confederacy  had,  it  appears,  no  federal 
executive  ;  Athens  supplied  what  was  needed  in  that  way, 
with  the  advantage  of  control  and  the  disadvantage  of  un- 
popularity, and  in  the  long  run  the  latter  outweighed  the 
former. 

The  new  League  gave  Athens  once  more  a  predominant 
position  in  the  Aegaean,  but  it  was  costly.  Meanwhile  Sparta 
was  losing  ground  in  her  war  with  Thebes,  for  Thebes  was 
rising  in  power.  As  she  rose,  inter-state  relations  readjusted 
themselves,  and  Athens  and  Sparta  drew  together.  So  at 
last  the  proposal  was  made  to  have  peace — once  more  on  the 
basis  of  the  King's  rescript.  And  then  came  an  enormous 
change.  For  Sparta  forbade  the  Theban  envoys  to  sign  for 
Bpeotia,  and  they  would  sign  on  no  other  terms.  The  battle 
of  Leuctra  followed  (371),  and  Spartan  ascendancy  was  gone 
for  ever.  Epameinondas  invaded  the  Peloponnese  again  and 
again,  and  new  nations  sprang  up  around  Sparta — the  old 

1  Isocrates,  de  Pace,  28,  46,  125.        ^  Demosthenes,  2,  Olynth.  28. 


388  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

communities  of  Arcadians  and  Eleians  whom  she  had  crushed, 
the  forgotten  Messenians  whom  she  had  turned  into  Helots. 
New  cities  rose,  and  a  new  nationaHsm  inspired  their  builders 
— it  was  the  King's  Peace  with  a  vengeance,  every  com- 
munity autonomous,  but  not  now  "  conveniently  for  the 
Spartans,"  and  never  again. 

The  hegemony  of  Thebes  need  not  long  delay  us.  In 
spite  of  the  interest  that  the  final  collapse  of  Sparta,  the 
great  military  gifts  of  Epameinondas,  and  the  revival  of  the 
nations  in  the  Peloponnese  awake,  there  are  no  new  ideas 
in  Theban  ascendancy.  The  main  object  is  to  secure  what 
Sparta  had  lost  and  by  the  same  means — by  the  division  of 
city  from  city,  the  real  cause  for  the  liberation  and  recon- 
stitution  of  Arcadia  and  Messenia — by  garrisons,  by  political 
propaganda,  by  reliance  on  Persia.^  There  is  nothing  new 
here — simply  "  the  reoccupation  of  lines  proved  twice  already 
to  be  untenable,"  with  Thebes  as  "  the  Prussia  of  Boeotia."  ^ 
Thebes  contributed  little  or  nothing  to  the  settlement  of  the 
real  problems  that  vexed  the  Greek  world,  and  when  her 
last  great  victory  was  won  at  Mantineia  in  362  at  the  cost  of 
the  life  of  her  greatest  citizen,  there  is  nothing  to  add  to  the 
words  with  which  Xenophon  ends  his  Hellenica — "  disorder 
and  confusion  became  yet  greater  after  the  battle  than  before 
in  Greece.  So  far,  then,  let  my  story  go  ;  what  follows  may 
perhaps  be  another's  care."  It  has  been  suggested  that  the 
battle  of  Aegospotami  was  the  real  end  of  the  Greek  city- 
state  ;  the  King's  Peace,  with  its  insistence  on  autonomy 
for  everybody,  is  another  date  for  marking  that  event ;  but 
perhaps  Xenophon's  is  as  good  as  any.  The  last  experiment 
had  been  made  ;  Greece  had  failed  to  unite  herself,  and  there 
was  no  hope  of  it  from  within.  Inside  of  three  years  a  prince 
ascended  a  foreign  throne,  who  did  it. 

The  rule  of  the  city-state  had  failed,  leaving  behind  it  a 
record,  for  ever  amazing,  of  glory  and  incompetence,  brilliance, 
power,  and  oppression.  It  remains  to  us  to  look  briefly  at 
the  new  movements  which  are  beginning  to  be  observed. 

1  Cf .  Isocrates,  Philip,  53-55,  on  the  meddling  and  muddling  of 
Thebes  ;  and  Archid.  66,  on  the  misery  and  disorder  of  the  Peloponnese. 

2W.  S.  Ferguson,  Greek  Impenalism,  p.  26.  Beloch,  Gr.  Gesch. 
i.  290,  on  Epameinondas. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  389 

They  will  not  hold  us  long,  for  detail  is  wanting,  and  even  if  it 
were  abundant,  it  is  the  idea,  so  far,  rather  than  the  execution 
of  it  that  is  interesting. 

The  passion  of  every  Greek  city  —  the  greater  perhaps, 
the  smaller  the  city — was  what  we  have  called  autopolitanism  ; 
they  would  be  "  citizens  of  themselves  "  avroiroXlrat,  make 
their  own  laws,  choose  their  own  magistrates,  and  perhaps 
even  stamp  their  own  currency.  But  new  conditions  assert 
themselves  and  bear  down  old  traditions.  The  little  com- 
munity might  not  be  safe  in  these  new  times — it  was  too  much 
at  the  mercy  of  neighbours  near  at  hand  or  across  the  sea,  or 
even  of  chance  fleets  and  the  commanders  of  passing  armies. 
Some  kind  of  union  might  be  safer.  So  in  several  ways 
cautious  attempts  were  made  to  find  that  ideal  union  which 
should  combine  the  safety  of  the  whole  and  the  maximum 
of  independence  for  the  parts. 

The  first  plan  was  what  the  Greeks  called  synoecism, 
the  joining  of  houses,  or,  in  English,  the  combination  of  a 
number  of  small  towns,  hamlets,  or  cantons  into  one  city. 
Theseus,  according  to  Athenian  belief,  was  the  first  author 
of  this  plan,  and  Athens  was  the  city  he  made  of  many  small 
items  and  units.  Another  form  of  synoecism  is  that  adopted 
by  the  birds  in  the  play  of  Aristophanes — they  had  never 
had  city  or  town  at  all,  and  they  begin  with  an  immense  one. 
Something  of  this  kind  would  seem  to  have  been  tried  by  the 
Messenians,  when  the  battle  of  Leuctra  suddenly  set  them 
free  from  the  Spartans  after  centuries  of  helotage  with  no 
traditions  and  no  local  jealousies.  The  great  city-foundations 
of  Alexander  and  his  successors  are  still  more  like  that  of  the 
birds — a  great  founder,  a  huge  wall,  and  citizens  from  every- 
where. But  such  foundations  are  obviously  different  from 
the  attempts  at  union  made  by  existing  communities. 

Rhodes  is  the  great  example  of  successful  work  on  these 
lines.  Toward  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  (408)  the 
three  cities  of  the  island  were  combined  and  a  new  city  built, 
which  took  the  island's  name  and  made  it  more  famous. 
Hippodamos  of  Miletos,  who  planned  the  Peiraieus  when  it  was 
laid  out,  is  said  to  have  designed  the  new  Rhodes,  but  this  is 
not  certain.!  What  matters  more  is,  that,  with  ups  and  downs 
*  See  F.  Haverfield,  Ancient  T own-Planning,  pp.  31,  32. 


390  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

of  fortune,  among  Spartans,  Athenians,  Carians,  and  Persians, 
all  watchful  and  eager  to  rule  city  and  island,  Rhodes  throve 
and  had  a  significant  history — commerce,  wealth,  and  even 
empire.  She  won  herself  a  great  position  among  the  con- 
tending kingdoms  of  the  Successors,  and  developed  a  maritime 
law,  some  part  of  which  the  Romans  adopted.  Nor  was  she 
without  glory  in  art  and  literature. 

The  story  of  Megalopolis,  founded  by  the  Arcadians  when 
Sparta  was  crushed  at  Leuctra,  is  not  so  glorious,  for  here 
complications  came  in.  Arcadia  was  not  an  island,  and  allies 
had  always  been  at  hand  to  foment  the  quarrels  of  Mantineia 
and  Tegea,  and  the  factions  of  the  parties  in  each  of  them  and 
in  every  other  Arcadian  commune  ;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
country  was  very  much  at  the  disposal  of  Sparta.  Lycomedes, 
the  Arcadian  statesman,  dreamed  of  a  new  age — a  free  and 
independent  and  united  Arcadia.  He  planned  a  real  Federal 
Government  with  a  wider  scope  than  had  yet  been  sought — a 
free  and  equal  union  of  the  whole  of  Arcadia,  the  cities  to  be 
constituent  free  commonwealths,  neither  subjects  nor  parishes, 
with  a  Koivbv  or  Federal  Assembly — "  and  whatever  should  be 
carried  in  the  Koinon  should  be  valid  for  all  the  cities  " — 
Federal  magistrates  and  a  Federal  army.^  How  he  managed 
to  inspire  the  Arcadians  with  a  new  sense  of  nationality  is  told 
by  Xenophon.  Xenophon  had  fought  his  way  through  Asia 
with  an  army  largely  Arcadian  and  apt  to  be  conscious  that 
it  was  Arcadian,  and  his  account  of  Lycomedes  has  a  tone  of 
irony.2  Lycomedes,  then,  was  a  Mantineian,  of  no  great  origin, 
but  well-to-do  and  ambitious ;  and  he  "  filled  the  Arcadians 
with  pride,  telling  them  that  they  were  the  only  people  really 
native  to  the  Peloponnese,  the  only  real  children  of  the  land, 
the  largest  tribe  of  Greece  and  the  strongest  in  physique — 
yes,  and  the  most  valiant,  too,  for  whenever  any  wished  mer- 
cenary soldiers,  they  preferred  Arcadians  to  all.  ^  The  Spartans 
had  never  yet  invaded  Athens  without  them,  and  nowadays 
the  Theban  never  went  without  Arcadians  to  Sparta.  .  .  .  The 
Arcadians  on  hearing  all  this  were  quite  puffed  up — they  had 
the  highest  enthusiasm  for  Lycomedes  ;  he  was  their  one  man 
{fjLovov  dvBpa).     So  they  appointed  as  magistrates  the  persons  of 

1  Freeman,  Federal  Government,  pp.  155  ff. ;  Pausanias,  viii.  27. 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  vii.  i,  23-25  ;  cf.  Anah.  vi.  2,  9  fit. ;  3,  1-9.       ^  Cf .  p.  239. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  391 

his  selection,  and  as  a  result  of  what  followed  the  Arcadians 
grew  great.  .  .  .  Wherever  they  resolved  to  go,  neither  night, 
nor  storm,  nor  distance,  nor  mountain  barrier  stopped  them." 
Xenophon  does  not  record  the  founding  of  Megalopolis,  but 
he  mentions  meetings  and  resolutions  of  the  "  Ten  Thousand," 
as  people  called  the  Koinon,  and  he  alludes  to  "  magistrates 
of  the  Arcadians,"  to  "  Aeneas  of  Stymphalos,  general  of  the 
Arcadians,"  the  tribal  name  replacing  the  old  city-names.  The 
fortunes  of  the  Arcadians  do  not  concern  us  here,  but  their 
experiment  was  a  striking  one — the  symbol  of  a  new  age. 

Other  experiments  were  not  quite  so  successful.  What  the 
Olynthians  designed  we  only  learn  from  their  worst  enemies. 
Acanthian  envoys  came  to  Sparta  and  denounced  them  for 
their  endeavour  to  absorb  their  neighbours  into  an  amalgama- 
tion where  all  would  use  the  same  laws,  and  have  mutual 
rights  of  holding  property  in  each  other's  lands  and  cities  as 
well  as  of  intermarriage,  and  all  should  be  citizens  together 
{<TVfi'7r6\iTev6iv).  The  Acanthians  and  others  preferred  to  be 
"  citizens  of  themselves,"  and  Sparta,  as  we  have  seen,  joined 
them  in  breaking  up  the  Olynthian  confederacy.  It  is  not 
altogether  clear  whether  the  Olynthians  purposed  a  real 
federal  union  or  some  such  absorption  of  neighbours  as  Rome 
achieved  in  Latium  and  Athens  long  before  in  Attica.  The 
sad  touch  about  King  Amyntas  of  Macedon  "  all  but  expelled 
from  the  whole  of  Macedonia  "  strikes  the  reader  oddly,  who 
is  familiar  with  the  events  of  later  reigns  in  those  regions.^ 

The  strangest  union  of  all  was  that  of  Argos  and  Corinth, 
which  it  is  hard  to  understand  from  what  is  told  us.  Xenophon 
represents  the  views  of  the  opposition — Corinth  was  really 
being  blotted  off  the  map  (acpavi^o/xivrjv),  the  boundary 
marks  were  gone,  Corinth  was  Argos,  the  Corinthians  Argives, 
little  better  than  resident  aliens  or  me  tics  in  their  own  city.  2 
It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  decline  of  Corinth  in  forty 
years.  The  Corinthians  had  driven  the  Spartans  to  take  the 
sword  in  432  ;  and  they  had  perished  with  the  sword — 

&s  aTToXoiTo  KOL  ciXKos  oris  roiavrd  ye  pe^oi. 

The  incorporation  of  Corinth  would  have  made  a  very  strong 
power — for  mainland  Greek  purposes — of  Argos  ;   but  such  a 

^  Xen.  Hellenica,  v.  2,  1 1-19,  the  speech  of  the  Acanthians. 
-  Xen.  Hellenica,  iv.  4.     The  union  was  in  the  year  393  or  392. 


392  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

new  era  as  Rhodes  saw  was  more  easily  attained  on  an  island 
and  by  cities  with  smaller  pretensions. 

A  fragmentary  inscription  reveals  another  sort  of  union 
between  cities.  Phocaea  and  Mitylene  established  a  mone- 
tary union  of  some  sort,  each  covenanting  to  coin  alternately. 
The  fragment  we  possess  of  their  agreement  deals  with  penalties 
upon  the  moneyer  if  his  alloy  contains  too  little  gold  or,  in  the 
metaphor  of  that  day,  is  "  too  watery."  Such  a  convention 
falls  very  far  short  of  a  political  or  federal  union,  but  it 
indicates  a  factor  making  for  unity.  The  coins  of  Byzantium 
and  Chalcedon  show  that  these  two  cities  must  have  had  a 
somewhat  similar  agreement.  ^ 

The  most  real  examples  of  Federalism,  however,  seem  to 
occur  among  the  Greek  peoples  reckoned  backward  and  behind 
their  neighbours — peoples  who  had  little  urban  life,  but  con- 
tinued on  old  lines  in  communes  and  cantons.  Little  is  known 
of  their  systems  and  arrangements,  but  federal  government 
of  greater  or  less  extent,  of  one  kind  and  another,  would  appear 
to  have  existed  at  this  time  in  Acamania,  Epirus,  Phocis,  and 
Thessaly.  In  the  period  that  follows  that  under  consideration, 
Phocis  and  Thessaly  played  great  parts  in  shaping  the  eventual 
destiny  of  Greece,  but  it  was  hardly  as  federal  unions  that 
they  did  so.  The  great  Leagues  of  Greece,  the  Achaean,  and 
the  Aetolian,  belong  to  a  later  age,  and  they  too  were  develop- 
ments among  peoples  whose  cities  were  relatively  unimportant. 

Summing  up  broadly  such  facts  as  these,  we  can  clearly 
recognize  the  emergence  of  a  new  tendency  toward  some  kind 
of  Federalism.  Once  more  it  means  that  men  were  beginning 
to  feel  that  the  city-state,  as  they  had  known  it,  whether 
small,  compact,  and  autonomous,  or  large  and  imperial,  was 
growing  out  of  date.  It  had  served  its  time,  but  by  now, 
bitterly  as  men  resented  anything  else,  it  was  obsolescent. 
To  emphasize  it  meant  to  retard  the  progress  of  the  world 
toward  a  goal,  not  yet  seen,  but  divined,  when  the  influence 
of  Greece  among  the  nations  should  be  greater  and  wider,  but 
different.  To  reach  that  goal  Greece  needed  the  union,  which 
the  federalists  were  quietly  seeking  in  one  corner  and  another  ; 
but  she  needed  another  sort  of  headship,  more  effective  and 

1  Hicks  and  Hill,  No.  94.  Hill,  Handbook  of  Greek  and  Roman 
Coins,  pp.  103  ff. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  393 

more   enlightened.    And   this   brings   us   once   more   to    the 
Prince. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  the  attention 
of  the  Greeks  was  called  in  a  new  way  to  Macedonia.     The 
king  had  died  in  413,  and  his  legitimate  heirs  had  been  swept 
aside — ^killed,  it  was  said,  in  the  most  commonplace  and  vulgar 
style — by  an  illegitimate  member  of  the  family.^    There  was 
nothing  new  in  this  among  the  outskirt  peoples,  but  Archelaos 
was  a  forerunner  of  greater  men.     He  was  a  man  of  action,  and 
with  Athenian  aid  recovered  the  national  port  of  Pydna,  and 
set  about  developing  his  kingdom.     He  trained  an  army  of 
hoplites  and  cavalry,  he  built  fortresses  all  over  his  realm  and 
laid    out    straight   roads,  and    acquired  a  military  strength 
beyond  the  eight  kings  who  preceded  him.^      And   then  he 
set  about   another  task — the  introduction  of   Macedon  into 
the  circle   of   Greek   culture.      He   built   a   palace   and   got 
Zeuxis  to  come  and  paint  in  it  for  him.     He  invited  the  great 
poets  of  Greece  to  live  with  him,  and  they  came — Agathon  of 
Athens,  Timotheos  of  Miletus,  and,  most  amazing  fact  of  all, 
Euripides,  who,  it  would  appear,  wrote  the  Bacchae  at  his 
court.      Hippocrates  of  Cos,  the  great  physician,  also  came 
and  settled.     The  king  instituted  a  national  festival  at  Dion 
with  gymnastic  and  musical  contests  in  the  Greek  style.     He 
began  to  expand  at  the  cost  of  his  neighbours,  but  this  the 
Spartans,  who  were  not  heralds  of  Greek  culture,  stopped  ; 
and  then  the  king  was  murdered  in  the  Macedonian  way  in 
399,  and  his  kingdom  was  to  be  fought  for  and  held  as  might 
be  by  whoever  of  the  family  could  get  it,  and  it  was  forty  years 
before  Macedon  saw  his  like. 

In  Sicily  something  similar  but  perhaps  even  more  striking 
had  taken  place.  Before  the  Peloponnesian  War  was  over, 
Egesta,  the  city  which  had  called  in  the  Athenians  and  launched 
them  on  their  disastrous  expedition  against  Syracuse,  was 
left  in  the  direst  need,  and  this  time  called  in  a  more  dangerous 
national  enemy.  ^     How  far  the  Carthaginian  invasion  of  Sicily 

^  Plato,  Gorg.  471  a,  a  vigorous  passage  by  Polus,  ironically  urging  on 
Socrates  that  Archelaos  must  be  miserable,  but  every  Athenian  envies  him, 

*  Thuc.  ii.  100. 

8  Xen.  Hellenica,  i.  i,  37;  5,  21.  Meltzner,  Gesch.  der  Karthager, 
i.  p.  256, 


394  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

was  worked  in  concert  with  the  Persian  plans  of  intervention 
in  the  Aegaean,  it  might  be  idle  to  guess.  Carthage  and 
Phoenicia  can  never  have  been  without  communications,  and 
even  if  there  were  no  understanding  between  the  powers,  any 
government  as  able  as  that  of  Carthage  would  have  recognized 
an  opportunity  so  promising.  Sicily  was  involved  in  a  series 
of  Punic  wars  and  sieges,  and  out  of  the  chaos  rose  the  tyrant 
Dionysius.  In  the  course  of  a  long  reign  he  had  four  wars 
with  Carthage,  generally  crowned  with  victory.  He  built  up 
an  empire  of  the  sea  and  ruled  Sicily  and  Southern  Italy  and 
the  Adriatic,  with  the  regions  about  Ancona  and  Venice  ;  and 
he  made  Syracuse  the  foremost  military  and  naval  power  of 
the  Greek  world.^  His  wars  with  his  siege  engines  and  his 
armies  of  mercenaries  marked  a  development  in  warfare. 
Whatever  might  be  said  of  his  character  and  his  treatment  of 
other  Greeks,  it  remained  that  he  stood  for  the  Hellenic  name, 
and  in  an  age  when  the  older  Greece  was  falling  conspicuously 
under  the  control  of  the  great  King,  he  drove  back  the  Oriental 
in  the  West.  Both  Athens  and  Sparta  courted  him  and  sought 
his  friendship.  He  stood  for  culture  too.  The  adventures 
of  Plato  at  his  court  are  another  story  ;  they  do  not  quite 
show  us  the  philosopher  king.  Dionysius  was  a  poet,  rather 
— a  tragic  poet,  who  won  prizes  at  Athens  with  his  tragedies, 
a  victory  for  art  tempered  by  diplomacy  it  may  be,  but  grateful 
to  a  monarch  whose  poems  had  been  howled  down  at  Olympia. 
What  followed  his  death  in  Sicily  showed  what  he  had  been 
— a  protagonist  of  the  Greek — bloodstained  and  unsatisfactory, 
but  a  champion  of  civilization,  and  effective  for  culture  and 
Hellenism  as  no  democracy  or  oligarchy  of  the  Greek  world 
could  ever  hope  to  be  again. ^ 

In  the  eastern  Mediterranean  a  much  more  attractive 
figure  meets  us.^  At  Salamis  in  Cyprus  in  the  fifth  century 
there  still  reigned  the  house  of  Teucer,  but  a  Phoenician  exile, 
trusted  by  the  Teucrid  king,  "  cast  forth  his  benefactor  and 

^  Isocrates,  Philip,  65  ;   Archid.  44-45. 

2  The  reader  may  remark  the  contrast  with  what  Thucydides  had 
written  of  tyrants  of  an  earher  age  (i.  17),  though  he  already  makes 
something  of  an  exception  of  Sicilian  tyrants. 

3  For  what  follows  about  Evagoras,  see  Judeich,  Kleinasiatische 
Studien,  though  his  dates  are  confused  and  wrong,  as  Meyer  shows. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  395 

seized  the  kingdom  himself  .  .  .  and,  wishing  to  secure  himself, 
he  barbarized  the  cit}^  and  enslaved  the  whole  island  to  the 
Great  King."  But  in  process  of  time  a  boy  was  born  to  the 
Teucrid  house  and  named  Evagoras.  Disaster  befell  the 
Phoenician  rulers  from  one  of  their  own  family  who  tried  to 
make  all  sure  by  killing  the  young  Teucrid.  But  he  escaped, 
and  then  with  fifty  followers  (as  those  say  who  set  the  number 
at  the  highest)  he  came  back,  and,  by  one  of  those  chances 
familiar  in  the  stories  of  the  Successors  of  Alexander  and  of  the 
Presidents  and  Dictators  in  South  America,  he  got  into  Salamis 
one  night  by  a  postern  in  the  wall  and  marched  directly  upon 
the  palace.  In  the  confusion  that  followed  the  citizens  looked 
on  while  the  foreigner's  servants  fought  the  returning  exile, 
but  he  beat  them  and  "  won  back  for  his  race  the  honours  of 
their  house  and  made  himself  tyrant  of  the  city.  .  .  .  And 
all  men  will  own  that  of  blessings  god  or  man  can  give  the 
greatest  is  a  tyranny,  the  most  august,  and  above  all  others 
the  prize  of  ambition."  Such  is  the  romantic  story  told  by 
Isocrates,^  and  such  his  reflection  upon  it,  and  both  seem  to 
take  us  far  from  the  Athens  of  Pericles. 

The  return  of  Evagoras  may  have  been  in  411 ;  and  the 
government  of  Persia,  always  rather  slipshod  in  its  way,  was 
preoccupied  with  the  Peloponnesian  War,  and  then  with  a 
change  of  rulers  and  the  rebellion  of  Cyrus  and  one  thing  and 
another,  so  that  the  king  of  Salamis  had  perhaps  twenty  years 
to  set  his  kingdom  in  order.  He  was  already  a  friend  of  the 
Athenians,  and  when  the  great  disaster  befell  them  at  Aegos- 
potami,  Conon  sailed  away  at  once  to  Salamis,  and  other 
refugees  followed  him.  "  Many  Greeks  of  good  family  {Ka\ol 
Ka<ya6ol)  came  and  settled  in  Cyprus  considering  the  mon- 
archic rule  of  Evagoras  lighter  and  more  law-abiding  than  the 
constitutions  they  left  behind  them  "  ^ — Lysander's  decarchies 
are  possibly  meant.  Evagoras  pursued  a  strong  Hellenizing 
policy.  "  He  foiind  the  city  thoroughly  barbarized.  Phoe- 
nician rule  had  excluded  the  Greeks  ;  the  arts  were  unknown  ; 
there  was  no  emporion,  no  harbour  ;"  ^  but  Evagoras  made  a 

^  Evag.  19-40.  This  glorification  of  a  --tyrant"  contrasts  strangely 
with  the  judgment  of  Thucydides  (i.  17) ;  but  the  two  writers  are 
looking  at  different  circumstances  as  well  as  from  different  outlooks. 

2  Isocrates,  Evag.  51.  *  Isocrates,  Evag.  47. 


396  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

Greek  city  of  it,  fortified  it,  built  a  fleet,  and  so  increased  it 
that  it  fell  short  of  none  among  those  of  the  Greeks.  Greek 
became  the  fashion,  everybody  was  Philhellen — it  was  a  matter 
of  rivalry.  Men  took  Greek  wives,  and  cultivated  music  and 
the  higher  studies  of  Athens.  And  when  at  last  Spartan 
tyranny  and  insolence  provoked  the  Persian  to  action,  Conon 
had  a  friend  and  supporter  in  Evagoras  in  carrying  through  the 
great  scheme  of  freedom  to  the  battle  of  Cnidos,  and  achieving 
Greek  freedom  and  the  restoration  to  Athens  of  her  old  glory, 
or  some  part  of  it.^ 

After  this  came  the  wars  between  Evagoras  and  Artaxerxes, 
which,  following  the  example  of  Isocrates,  we  may  lightly 
pass  over,  for  the  king  of  Salamis  was  reduced  at  one  time  to 
terrible  straits.  Artaxerxes,  we  are  told,  was  more  in  earnest 
about  this  war  than  any  other,  and  counted  Evagoras  a  more 
serious  antagonist  than  Cj^rus.^  The  Persian  operations  were  on 
an  enormous  scale  ;  we  read  of  forces  of  300,000  men,  and  we 
are  told  that  the  war  cost  the  Great  King  15,000  talents  and 
more.  But  "  in  the  end  Evagoras  so  sated  them  with  war, 
that  though  the  tradition  had  always  been  that  the  King  was 
never  reconciled  to  any  that  revolted  till  he  had  him  a  prisoner, 
they  were  glad  to  make  peace,  and  waived  this  law  of  theirs, 
and  did  not  disturb  the  rule  of  Evagoras."  ^  In  three  years 
the  Persian  King  took  away  the  Empire  of  vSparta,  but  after  ten 
years  he  left  Evagoras  master  of  what  he  had  before  they  went 
to  war.*  So  history  is  written  for  the  sons  of  kings.  In  plain 
fact,  so  far  as  we  can  put  it  together,  the  Persian,  in  Thucy- 
dides'  phrase,  once  more  "  tripped  over  himself,"  and  owed  his 
disasters  to  the  curious  independence  with  which  his  generals 
arranged  their  relations  with  the  enemy  and  with  one  another. 
None  the  less  Evagoras  died  king  of  Salamis. 

Now  glance  at  the  history  of  Greece.  In  the  middle  of  this 
war  or  series  of  wars  in  Cyprus  the  King's  Peace  was  sent  down 
by  Antalkidas,  and  in  it  the  King  claimed  Cyprus  ;  and  Sparta 
readily  enough  and  Athens  reluctantly  had  to  abandon  the 
Cypriot  Greeks.  Think  of  the  folly  of  abandoning  such  a  man 
to  the  barbarian  !  is  the  cry  of  Isocrates  at  the  time,  especially 
when  "  of  the  forces  of  Tiribazos  the  most  serviceable  of  the 

1  Isocrates,  Evag.  52-56.  *  Isocrates,  Evag.  58. 

'  Isocrates,  Evag.  63.  *  Isocrates,  Evag.  64. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  397 

infantry  have  been  gathered  from  these  regions  and  the  most 
of  his  fleet  has  sailed  from  Ionia."  ^  Greek  as  ever  against 
Greek,  and  the  mercenaries  hired  by  the  enemy  of  the  nation 
— when,  if  Greece  would  but  unite,  the  King  of  the  Persians 
would  be  so  easy  to  overthrow,  once  he  had  no  more  Greek 
soldiers.  But  it  was  not  to  be,  for  the  last  Darius  put  thousands 
of  them  into  the  field  against  Alexander. 

What  was  the  moral  of  it  ?  Why  could  an  Archelaos  lift 
a  state  out  of  barbarism,  almost  into  Hellenism  ?  a  Dionysius 
rescue  the  western  Greek  world  from  Semitic  Orientals  ?  an 
Evagoras  alone  and  at  bay  wring  peace  out  of  an  Artaxerxes 
and  maintain  the  Hellenism  he  had  created  ?  and  a  Jason,  a 
Hecatomnos,  a  Maussollos — nay,  a  Mania  and  the  princes  of 
Panticapaeum — why  is  it  everywhere  the  same,  while  the 
fellow-citizens  of  Leonidas  and  Themistocles  can  manage 
nothing  but  to  thwart  one  another  and  worry  and  betray  the 
rest  of  the  Greeks  ? 

Centuries  later  Tacitus  tells  us  how  the  Romans,  summing 
up  the  work  of  Augustus,  recognized  that  "  no  resource  had 
been  left  for  a  distracted  country  but  the  rule  of  one  man."  ^ 
They  were  right,  and  it  was  as  true  of  Greece  in  the  period 
under  our  review.  We  need  not  rehearse  the  story  again. 
The  superiority  of  monarchy  in  plan  and  action  is  discussed 
by  Isocrates  in  his  Nicocles — it  is  evident,  he  says,  at  once  if 
you  will  look  at  monarchy  and  democracy  in  operation.^  The 
whole  piece  is  a  pamphlet  in  defence  of  monarchy,  but  what  it 
means  in  reality  is  brought  out  with  the  utmost  clearness  in 
the  "  speech  "  known  as  the  Philip.  It  is  an  address  to  Philip 
of  Macedon,  written  in  346,  and  it  is  sent  to  him  because  of 
signal  advantages  he  alone  possesses  for  the  service  of  Greece. 
Other  men,  famous  men,  are  "  under  cities  and  laws,"  with 
nothing  possible  for  them  but  to  do  as  they  are  told ;  "  you 
alone  have  great  authority  given  you  by  Destiny  {rvxv) — to 
send  ambassadors  to  whom  you  will,  to  receive  them  from  whom 
you  think  fit,  to  say  what  you  think  advantageous  ;  you  are 
in  possession  of  wealth  moreover  and  of  power,  such  as  no 
Greek  ever  had — the   only  things   there  are  that  can  both 

1  Isocrates,  Paneg.  134,  135.     Cf.  Philip,  125,  126. 

2  Tacitus,  Annals,  i.  9. 

^  Isocrates,  Nicocles,  17. 


398  FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 

persuade  and  compel."  ^  Philip  certainly  had  a  freedom  of 
action  and  a  power  that  no  other  had.  Demosthenes  saw  this 
as  clearly  as  anybody,  but  Isocrates  and  he  felt  differently. 
All  that  Demosthenes  stood  for,  all  that  he  believed  in,  all 
that  he  was — to  Isocrates  it  is  all  chatter,  madness,  tedium, 
and  the  betrayal  of  Greece.  He  is  sick  of  the  city-state  and 
its  leaders  and  its  empire,  and  all  the  confusion  they  make, 
the  blood  they  shed,  the  wasting  of  the  life  of  man,  the  aban- 
donment of  the  real  work  and  glory  of  Hellas.  He  is  done  with 
them.  His  pamphlet  is  a  counterblast  of  hostility  and  re- 
nunciation to  Demosthenes  and  his  friends  and  his  ideals. ^ 
He  addresses  himself  to  that  prince  whom  Demosthenes  has 
been  attacking  for  the  last  five  years  as  the  enemy  of  Greece. 
Philip  can  do  what  he  sees  to  be  good.     What  should  he  do  ? 

First  of  all,  Philip  must  unite  Greece,  he  must  reconcile 
Argos,  Sparta,  Thebes,  and  Athens,  and  all  the  rest  will  be  at 
one — everything  conspires  to  help  him,  the  disasters  they  all 
have  suffered,  the  advantage  each  will  draw  from  harmony; 
And  then  he  must  lead  the  united  peoples  on  the  long-delayed 
crusade  against  the  Persian.  Jason  won  great  glory  by  talking 
of  this  ;  Philip  must  do  it — take  the  whole  of  the  Persian 
Empire  if  he  can  ;  if  not,  then  Asia  Minor,  from  Cilicia  to 
Sinope,  and  found  new  cities  there  for  the  wandering  and 
broken  men,  whom  poverty  will  never  allow  to  rest,  who 
plunder  all  they  come  upon,  who  grow  in  numbers  that  threaten 
to  make  them  as  great  a  danger  to  Greeks  as  to  barbarians, 
A  man  of  high  spirit,  who  loves  Greece,  who  sees  further  than 
other  men — a  man  like  Philip — will  use  these  roaming  men 
against  the  Persian,  will  win  them  land  and  plant  them  cities, 
rid  them  of  poverty|and  make  them  a  bulwark  for  all  Greece.^ 
In  any  case,  he  could  set  free  the  Greek  cities  of  Asia.  Other 
men,  as  well  as  Philip,  are  descendants  of  Herakles,  but  they 
were  born  to  live  under  laws  and  constitutions — they  must 
love  each  man   that  city  where  he  dwells  ;  *    "  you  as  one 

^  Isocrates,  Philip,  14,  15. 

^  This  comes  out  still  more  clearly  in  the  short  letter  to  Philip 
written  in  ^,2,7,  where  he  ends  by  thanking  old  age  for  this  alone,  that 
what  he  thought  and  wrote  when  young,  he  now  sees  done  in  part  and 
in  part  doing  by  Philip's  prowess. 

3  Isocrates,  Philip,  120-123.  *  Isocrates,  Philip,  127. 


UNDER  WHICH  KING,  BEZONIAN  ?  399 

born  free  must,  like   your  ancestor,  count  all  ^Greece  your 
country." 

Isocrates,  a  pedant,  a  self-conscious  stylist,  a  man  of  poor 
nature,  has  somehow  hit  the  world's  future  as  Demosthenes 
did  not.  Demosthenes  loved  the  city  where  he  dwelt,  and 
lived  for  her.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  anyone  who  (in  Longinus' 
phrase)  would  choose  to  be  Isocrates  rather  than  Demosthenes  ; 
but  the  course  of  events  fulfilled  the  dreams  of  the  smaller 
man,  so  far  as  the  outward  look  of  things  went.  Alexander 
and  Alexandria  embody  his  scheme  of  things  for  Greece,  buL 
how  different  they  were  from  what  he  dreamed  !  What  a 
new  world  they  made  !  "  All  Greece  "  becomes  a  world-wide 
"  country,"  and  from  the  Nile  westward  to  the  Pacific  all 
best  minds  of  the  ancient  world  and  the  modem  draw  from  her 
inspiration.  But  the  inspiration  comes  from  the  men  of  the 
city-states — the  poets  and  the  exiles,  the  dreamers  of  dreams — 
the  people  men  laughed  at,  whom  they  hated  and  drove  out — 
who  cherished  impossible  ideals  of  freedom  and  of  human 
character. 

Great  treasure  halls  hath  Zeus  in  heaven, 
From  whence  to  men  strange  dooms  be  given, 

Past  hope  or  fear  ; 
And  the  end  men  looked  for  cometh  not. 
And  a  path  is  there  where  no  man  thought ; 

So  hath  it  fallen  here. 


INDEX 


Abu-simbel,  39 

Acanthus,  382,  391 

Achaemenians,  14 

Acharnians,  no 

Acropolis,  18 

Aeginetans,  134 

Aegospotami,    109,   120,   129,   134,   189, 

228,  267 
Aeschylus,  10,  12,  27,  43,  48 
Agesilaos,  211,  233,  303,  337,  357,  378 
Agis,  304 
Alcaeus,  40 
Alcibiades,   69,    86,   88,  loi,  109,  115, 

116-20,  123,  139,  179,   180,  226, 

227,  277,  281 
Alexander    the  Great,   213,    ,233,    234, 

294,  300,  366,  399 
Alilat,  203 

Alphabets,  13,  17,  29,  224,  275 
Ammianus  Marcellinus,  35 
Amphipolis,  64 

Amyntas  of  Macedon,  382,  391 
Anaxagoras,  43,  47,  48,  50,  152,  166 
Anaximander,  41 
Andrapodismos,  134,  135,  257 
Antalkidas,  Peace  of  (King's  Peace),  233, 

273.  374,  381,  384 
Antimenidas,  40,  317 
Antisthenes  the  Cynic,  176,  291-4,  347 
Anytos,  65,  183,  185,  276-8,  281,  282 
ApoUodorus,  son  of  Pasion,   283 ;   and 

Chapter  X.  throughout 
Arcadians,  239,  258,  390,  391 
Archelaos  of  Macedon,  68,  139,  393 
Archidamos,  King  of  Sparta,  80,  97,  IDS, 

106 
Archinos,  274,  275 
Argos,  109,  308,  391 
Aristagoras,  213 
Aristarchos,  oligarch,  187,  188 
Aristophanes,  56,   80,  96,  97-101,  no, 

III,  119,  121,  122,   124,  128-33, 

139-44,  165,  167,  169,  277,  289- 

91,  318,  322,  344,  345,  347 
Aristotle,   86,   120,  345,  351,  353,  369, 

376.     See  Atkenaidn  Politeia 
Artaxerxes  I,  225,  230 
Artaxerxes  II,  213,  230,  396 
Artemisia,|5,  214 

26 


Assyrian  script,  224 

Astronomy,  41,  166 

Athenaidn  Politeia  (Aristotle's),  190-3 

Athenian  Oligarch   (author),  53-5,   109, 
169,  186,  308 

Athens.  See  generally  Chapters  II.,  IV., 
VI.,  IX.,  X.,  XII.  See  Com- 
merce, Grain  trade,  Peiraieus, 
Metics 
Athenian  character,  79,  81  ;  changes 
in  fourth  century,  267-73 

—  citizenship    given    to   metics,   271, 

275,  318 

—  Confederacy,  First,  47,  385 

—  Confederacy,  Second,  385-7 

—  Democracy,    51-6,    77,    112,    113, 

176,  184,  185,  187,  270,  273,  274, 
275,  279,  286-90,  295-301 

—  education,  131,  165-71 

—  Empire,  44,  46,  56,  74,  75,  76,  77- 

81,  104,  108,  225 

—  law  courts,  327,  328,  333,  334 

—  Navy,  44,  107,  109,  121,  122,  123, 

237,  271,  283,  287 

—  oligarchic   party,    53-5,    109,   iii, 

186-9,  273 

—  parties,  109-12 
Auiopolitanistn,  108,  364,  389 

Babylon  and  Babylonia,  11,  30,  39 
Banking    and  bankers,   311,   312,   313, 

317,  323 
Bardiya,  14,  207 
Behistun,  14,  206 
Bosporos,  303,  306 
Boucher,  Col.,  244,  245,  247,  252 
Byzantium,  260,  305,  315,  392 

Cadmus,  29 

Calendar,  223 

Callias,  225,  322 

Callicles  (in  Gorgias),  58,  164,  285 

Cambyses,  30 

Camels,  218,  219 

Carians,  3,  20,  125 

Carthage  and  Carthaginians,  9,  40,  393, 

394 
Cassiterides,  31 
Cavalry,  218 


402 


FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 


Cephalos,  70,  122,  317 

Charmides,  185 

Cheirisophus,  240,  250,  258 

Chios,  125,  383 

Chrysostom,  35 

Cilicia,  214,  246,  247 

Cimon,  10,  48,  61,  225 

Circumnavigation  of  Africa,  31 

City-state,    51-3,    273,    279,    285,    364, 

365,  367,  369,  376,  381,  388,  389 
Clearchus,  239-42,  244,  305 
Cleon,  57,  63-6,  73-7,  87-9,  105,  IIS, 

116,  158 
Cleophon,  116,  193,  373 
Climates,  4,  13 
Cnidos,  battle  of,  303,  383 
Coinage,   133,  209,  220,  222,  223,  310, 

311 
Colonization,  261,  262,  366 
Commerce,  44,  45,    121,    219-23,    271, 

272,  283,  304-12,  329,  364,  365 
Conon,  272,  302,  303,  383,  395 
Conservatism,  80,  278 
Corcyra,  45,  76,  lOl 
Corinth,  33,  34,  103,  107,  I73i  3o8,  391 
Cosmetics,  354 
Crates,  181 

Critias,  58,  120,  191,  193,  194,  I95 
Crocodiles,  13,  I? 
Croesus,  12 
Ctesias,  247 

Cunaxa,  battle  of,  245,  247 
Custom  house,  45 
Cyprus,  214,  394-6 
Cyrus,  the  elder,  14,  203,  205,  206,  214, 

215 
Cyrus,  the  younger,  227,  228,  229,  231, 

238-47,  250,  377 

Dances,  255,  256,  265,  347 

Danube,  31 

Darius  I,  204,  206-15,  219-24 

Darius  II,  213,  230,  238 

Daskyleion,  13,  126,  240 

Datames,  233 

Deceleia,  109,  132,  27 1,  305 

Delos,  49,  125,  126 

Delphi,  12,  24,  49 

Demaratos,  216,  226 

Democracy,  7,  8,  51-6,  115,  362,  367. 

See  Athenian  Democracy 
Demosthenes,  general,  279 

—  orator,  282,  283,  304,  317,  322,  398, 

399 
Derkylidas,  378 
Die  Chrysostom,  256,  257,  354 
Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  150,  152 

—  of  Sinope,  Cynic,  293,  294,  296 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  73,  94 

—  of  Syracuse,  311,  393 
Dionysos,  27,  28 


Egypt  and  Egyptians,  4,  5,   11,  16-21, 

25-30,  39,  204,  214,  224 
Elateia,  114 
Elis,  175,  339,  372,  373 
Empedocles,  28 
English  history,  38,  39,  267-9 
Epameinondas,  387 
Etruscans,  9 
Euripides,  68,  80,  126,  127,  131,  165 

his  birth  and  childhood,  136,  137 

library,  137,  141,  145 

study  in  cave  by  sea,  138 

prize  for  tragedy,  139 

ode  for  Alcibiades,  139 

leaves  Athens,  139 

attacked  by  Aristophanes,  139-43 

reply  in  Cyclops,  144 

his  popularity,  131,  165 

methods  in  Tragedy,  141 

questions,  137,  139,  144,. I45 

reactions  against  current  ideas,  156 

religious  ideas,  142,  143,  145-53 

on  mystics,  14S-7,  150,  \^\ 

views  on  morals,  147 

philosophy,  145 

on  Nature  (especially  sea),  138,  146 

birds,  161 

feeling  for  humanity,  160 

on  suffering,  1 50 

on  the  soul,  1 5 1-4 

on  immortality,  152-4 

on  vi^oman,  157,  i6q,  348 

on  slavery,  137,  160 

emphasis  on  fact,  146,  154 

Troades,  157-60 
Euxine  (Black  Sea),  256 

Greek  cities  there,  256,  257 

—  culture,  256,  303 

sea-faring,  11,  262,  265 

products  and  trade,  305 
Evadne,  148 
Evagoras  of  Cyprus,  295,  368,  395,  396, 

397 
Exile  and  exiles,  3,   64-70,    119,    338, 

339 

Federalism,  367,  385,  386,  389-92 
Fleets,     122-4.      See     also     Athenian 

Navy,  Trierarchs 
Four  Hundred,  the,  in,  186-8,  190 

Geography,  12,  31,  32,  222 

Geology,  25,  42 

Geometry,  29,  166 

Gods,  foreign,  in   Greece,    26,    28,    50, 

126,  127 
Goethe,  i,  62,  139,  144,  183 
Gold,  34,  44,  61,  133,  212,  213,  222,  223 
Gorgias  of  Leontini,  292 
Gorgias,  Plato's.     See  Callicles 


INDEX 


403 


Grain  trade,  44,  104,   121,   133,  304-7, 

329,  374 
Granikos,  battle  of  the,  236 
Greeks — 

after  Salamis,  37-8 

culture,    Panhellenic,   295,    371,   382, 

399 

decline  of  city-states,  365 

democratic   ways,    113,    241-2.      See 

also  Athenian  Democracy 
education  of  women,  344-9 
exploration,  39-40 
in  fourth  century  B.C.,  267 
ideas  on  manners,  115,  325,  359 
ideas  on  marriage,  345,  349-54 
ideas  on  trades,  322,  325 
morality,  118 
Panhellenism,  iii,  112 
particularism,  108 
patriotism,  67 
poverty,  116,  366 

Halicarnassus,  4,  5-7)  10 

Hecataios,  25 

Hegemony,  367 

Heraclitus,  41 

Herakleia,  258 

Hermae,  mutilation,  46,  50,  1 18 

Hermippos,  45,  50 

Herodicus  of  Selymbria,  168 

Herodotus — 

origin,  3 

characteristics,  2,    8,    13,   1 4,  26,  29, 

32,  35.  36 

travels,  9-13 

his  critics,  3,  21,  22,  69,  98 

his  study  of  books,  25,  27 

opinions,  6,  30 

interests,  6,  8,  15,   16,   18,   19,  22,  24, 
25,  29,  35 

on  Democracy,  7,  8,  52 

on  Persia,  15,  200,  201 

Persian  friends,  8,  13,  14,  15 

admiration  of  foreigner,  3,  15,  16,  30 

oracles,  12,  24 

religion,  19-29 

alleged  cynicism,  22 

irony,  22 

order  of  his  books,  24 

Geography,  31,  32 
Hesiod,  25,  87 
Hippias,  33-5,  308 
Hippocrates  of  Cos,  393 
Hittites,  18 

Homer,  25,  32,  33,  87,  125,  176,  177 
Hyperbolus,  70,  87,  112,  n8 
Hyperboreans,  31 

Immortality,  27,  28,  29,  360 
India,  32,  207,  222 
Interest,  rates  of,  319 


Ion  of  Chios,  49,  281 

lonians,  3,  4 

Iphicrates,  280 

Ischomachus,  322,  and  Chapter  XI. 

Isocrates,  iii,  166,  170,  175,230,233, 
240,  267,  272,  282,  286,  287,  288, 
294,  29s,  310,  314,  317,  318,  319, 
331,  366,  368,  369,  370,  373,  374, 

375.  379,  381,  384,  387,  396-9 
Italy,  9,  28 

Jason,  of  Pherae,  320,  379,  382,  398 

Kalos  Mgathos,  163,  171,  172,  174,  219, 

281,  342,  353 
Kinadon,  375 
Kolaios,  40 
Kurds,  251 

Languages,  Greeks  and  foreign  languages, 

13 

Larissa,  239 

Laureion,  44 

Leuctra,  battle  of,  339,  387,  389 

Libraries,  138 

Libyans,  2,  26 

Lichas,  126,  189,  226 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  77,  82,  250 

Liturgies     (see    also    Trierarchy),    no, 

122,  273,  318,  320,  326 
Longinus,  33,  94,  158 
Lycia,  214,  224 
Lydians,  12 
Lygdamis,  5-7 
Lysander,  120,  213,  227,  228,  376,  377, 

378,  395 
Lysias,   120,    122,    190,    191,    193,  237, 
273,  274,  288,  317,  329 

Magians,  22,  202,  203 

Mantineia,  109,  237,  374 

Maps,  31,  41 

Marcus  Aurelius,  131 

Megalopolis,  390 

Megarian  decree,  97-103 

Melos,  56,  74,  75,  134,  135,  159,  164 

Mercenary  troops,   39,  40,  232,  237-44, 

257,  397 
Messenia,  47,  106,  367,  388 
Metics,  foreigners  settled  at  Athens,  44, 

46,  307,  309,  310,  313,  314,  318, 

319 

Mining,  44,  271 

Mithras,  203 

Mitylene,  74,  75,  134,  392 

Moltke,  von,  251 

Mossynoeci,  252 

Mycalessos,  76 

Mysteries,  20,  26-9,  50,  145-7,  150,  151 

Niceratos,  176,  177,  352 


404 


FROM  PERICLES  TO  PHILIP 


Nicias,  55,  64,  73,  in,   117,  125,  134, 

166,  191,  322 
Nile,  16,  25 

Oceanus,  32 

Olympia,  117,  126 

Olynthian  confederacy,  382,  391 

Oracles,  12,  24,  33,  34,  124,  173 

Orpheus  and  Orphics,  28,  29,  49 

Oxyrhynchus,  Hellenica  of,  132 

Painting,  137,  138 

Panhellenism.     See  Greeks 

Pantheia,  352 

Panticapaeum,  304 

Panyasis,  5 

Papremis,  battle  of,  II 

Paras ang,  253 

Parsis,  201,  202 

Pasargadae,  202,  205 

Pasion,    the    banker.      See  Chapter  X. 

generally 
Pausanias,  King,  374,  376,  377 
—  traveller,  71,  339,  342 
Peiraieus,  122,  123,  195,  307,  308,  321, 

382,  383,  389 
Peloponnesian  War,  Chapters  IV.,  V., 

VI.,  270 
Peneios  gulley,  22 
Pericles,  48,  51-3,  67,  97-105,  127,  220, 

345 
Persepolis,  202 
Persians  (see  Chapter  VII.),  2,  15,  16, 

121,  137 
characteristics,  198-200 
dress  and  equipment,  217,  247 
religion,  15,  201-4,  228 
empire,  207,  208,  231,  232,  246,  257 
government,  207-15,  395 
courtesy,  200,  359 
truth,  15,  200 

language,  11,  13,  224,  227,  253 
inscriptions,  14,  206,  207 
policy  toward  Greeks,  213,  224,  225, 

226,  233,  260,  302,  366,  377,  380 
Liberals,  7,  13 

Greek  criticism  of  system,  230,  23  X 
King,  228,  229 
"King's  Eye,"  21 1,  226 
King's  hoards,  212,  213,  396 
Queens,  229 
army,  217-9 
fleets,  219 
Calendar,  223 

Greek  exiles  with  Persians,  215,  216 
ascendancy  in  fourth  century,  228,  232, 

233>  273,  368 
Greek  crusade  against  Persia,  233,  370, 

379>  380,  384 
Pharnabazos,  210,   211,   227,  233,  272, 

302,  310,  370,  378,  383 


Pheidias,  98,  100,  loi 

Philip  of  Macedon,  295,  368,  397,  398 

Phoebidas,  382 

Phoenicians,  29,  31 

Phoenix  (bird),  17 

Phormion,  the  banker,  321-35 

Pindar,  30,  39,  42,  148,  149 

Pisistratus,  33,  44,  125 

Pitanates  lochos,  69 

Plato,  29,   41,  50,  no,  120,  154,  164, 

168,  278,  281,  284,  285,  287,  296- 

300,  318,  321,  347-9,  371,  394 
Plutarch,  3,  29,  42,  48,  97,  98,  126,  247, 

294,  381 
Polo,  Marco,  212 
Polybius,  42,  114,  233,  305,  375 
Pontus.     See  Euxine 
/'<7r(?2  (pamphlet),  309,  310 
Postal  system,  Persian,  15,  212,  221 
Praxiteles,  281 
Prince,  the,  in  the  Greek  world,  367,  380, 

393-8 
Prodicos  of  Ceos,  1 72 
Prophets,  48,  89,  124,  125,  261,  262 
Protagoras,  7,  57 
Pylos,  65,  67 
Pyrene,  31 
Pythagoras,  28 

Red  Sea,  31 

Rhampsinitos,  27 

Rhetoric.     See  Athenian  Education 

Rhodes,  383,  389 

Salamis,  35,  37,  136,  138,  364 
Samos,  3,  6 
San,  letter,  13 
Satrap,  208,  209,  211,  219 
Satyros,  303,  304,  306 
Scillus,  339-42 
Scythians,  16,  304 
Seuthes,  263-6 
Shapur,  King,  207 
Simonides,  167 

Slaves,  46,  54,  55,  132,  137,  160,  271, 
284,  287,  291,   313,   315-7,  323, 

324,  335 

Snow-blindness,  253 

Socrates,  41,  57,  163,  165,  166,  168, 
169-71,  174,  176,  178-85,  249, 
276-80,  292,  304,  305,  311,  321, 

353 
Soloii,  27,  44,  322 
Sopaios,  son  of,  302-16 
Sophists    and  sophistic,    57,    160,    164, 

183 
Sophocles,  2,  32,  48,  49,  127,  186,  345 
Sparta   and   Spartans,    51,    54,    69,    97, 

102,   103,    105-9,   185,  189,    225, 

239,  251,  258-60,  266,    278,  310, 

339.  364,  365,  368,  372 


INDEX 


405 


Spartan  rule,   258-60,    273,   302,    307, 

372-83,  387 
Sphacteria,  65 
Stoics,  293 
Suez  Canal,  221 
Sugar,  2 
Suidas,  3,  5 
Synesius,  257 
Synoecism,  389 
Syracusan   Expedition,    12,    67,    Ii7~8, 

122,  139,  140,  225,  270 

Ten    Thousand,     the,     216,     218,    and 

Chapter  VIII.  at  large 
Tertullian,  251 
Thales,  41,  386 
Thebes  and  Thebans,  42,  132,  171,  189, 

190,  367,  382,  383,  387,  388 
Themistocles,  10,  89,  276 
Theocritus,  241 

Theophrastus,  282,  311,  312,  331,  332 
Theoric  Fund,  332 

Theramenes,  79,  186,  187,  188, 190-3,  318 
Theseus,  331  ;  his  bones,  48 
Thirty,  the,  188,  189,  190,  191,  273,  288, 

297 
Thracians,  76,  133,  239,  255,  263-5 
Thrasybulus,  185,  274-6,  329 
Thrasydaios,  373 
Thucydides,  35,  122,  125,  173,  196 

his  origin,  61 

education,  62 

political  life,  62-4 

general,  64 

exile,  64-71,  196 

return  to  Athens,  71,  196 

epitaph  on  Euripides,  68 

investigations,  67-9 

criticism  of  Herodotus,  69 

characteristics  of  mind,  68-71,  76,  81-3 

emphasis  on  accuracy,  69,  84-6 

his  History,  72-4,  83  ff. 

style,  74,  81,  93 

grammar,  78,  94 

political  ideas,  62,  74,  77-81 

moral  feeling,  75,  76,  89 

pathos,  76,  82 

interest  in  human  mind,  70,  86 

irony,  74,  81 

chronology,  35,  85 

artist,  86 

the  speeches,  90-2 

omissions,  87 

abstract  ideas,  8g,  90 

ancient  critics  of,  72,  73,  76,  82,  85, 
92,  93,  94 

speeches,  90-2 

influence  of  tragedy,  93 
Thurii,  8,  9 

Timotheos,  general,  280,  286,  320,  321, 
368,  384,  387 


Timotheos,  poet,  282,  393 
Tissaphernes,  119,    226,    227,   238,  239, 

240,  257,  377,  378 
Torture  in  law,  313,  316 
Trapezus,  257 

Trierarchs,  no,  122,  123,  329-32 
Troades,  157-60,  189 
Tyrants — 

earlier  sense,  5,  6,  8,  33-5,  164 

later  sense,  393-8 

Virgil,  131,  156 

Warfare,  217,  218,  219,  233,   244,  245, 

246,  279,  368 
Wealth,  standards  of,  322 
Wills,  322-3 
Women's  education,  344-9 

Xenophanes,  26,  42,  49,  145,  169 
Xenophon,  85,  135,  163,   166,  284,  286, 
371,  372,  390.     See  Ten  Thousand 
early  days,  163,  17 1-5 
perhaps  prisoner  at  Thebes,  171 
piety,  173-5,   i83>  250,  253,  261,  340, 

359 
interest  in  country  life,  175,  343,  361 
hunting,  177,  178,  210,  246 
library,  361 

relations  with  Socrates,  178-85 
Mejiiorabilia,  179,  181,  183 
Symposium,  176,  292 
political  views,  173,  175,  187,  188 
historian,  190-3,  195,  281,  372 
relation  to  Thucydides,  196 
relation  to  other  writers,  361 
man  of  letters,  210,  235,  247,  254,  341, 

359 
Anabasis,  235,  236,  266 
joins  Cyrus,  241,  249,  337 
on  Persia,  200,  201 
as  leader,  242,  243,  249,  253 
pseudonyms,  248 
dreams,  250 

in  Armenian  mountains,  251-4 
at  battle  of  Coroneia,  337,  338 
exiled,  338,  339 
life  at  Scillus,  339,  343 
Oeconomicos.     See  Chapter  XI.  at  large 
at  Corinth,  339,  358 
on  household,  350 
tidiness,  355 

on  marriage,  350,  351,  352,  353 
romance,  352 
his  wife,  356 
his  sons,  356-9 
on  slaves,  360,  361 
Xerxes  I,  5,  13,  224,  230,  304 

Zeno,  181,  310 
Zoroaster,  201-4 


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